


Ode to A Caged Bird

by Ara (WalkUnseen)



Series: Ode to A Caged Bird [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alcohol Abuse, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Catharsis, Dealing With Trauma, Dissociation, Drug Abuse (brief), Episode 29 AU, Exploring Inter-Team Dynamics, Gen, Healing, Heavy (and definitely incorrect) Speculations Involving Molly’s Past, Hurt/Comfort, Inter-Team Conflict, Multi, Multiple Story Arcs, Other, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Goblin Mom Nott, Protective Team as a Whole, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, Ramifications of Traumatic Events, Rape Aftermath, Self Harm, Slavery, Suicidal Ideation, Team as Family, The Road to Recovery parallels the Road to the Menagerie Coast here, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Torture, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Working through Guilt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2019-07-06 05:33:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 25
Words: 254,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15879561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WalkUnseen/pseuds/Ara
Summary: "In the ensuing muffled darkness, with flecks of red seeping through the fabric from the burning light of the distant furnaces, Caleb breathes a silent promise into the black.He will kill Lorenzo."





	1. Caged

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: depictions of violence. 
> 
> -slaver stuff: i.e. chaining people up and man handling

So far every assailant besides Lorenzo has gone down easily and with little fanfare or struggle. Their bodies litter the blood-stained dungeon, sprawled and gruesome where they've fallen for the last time. Crimson brims in the troughs of rough stonework beneath their paling limbs in a gruesome network of gory rivers and the big, blue bastard himself has seemingly vanished into thin air amongst it all. Finally giving them all a short reprieve to regroup-- and hopefully heal up.

Caleb's collapsed against the staircase, propped up on one elbow, still panting heavily and clutching at a gruesome slash in his torso. His clothes torn down to the flesh across his front, blood slipping past his fingers onto the steps below in a slow, damning patter that rings in his ears with each plipping strike. It _should_ be alarming that his breathing has grown labored with each passing second, but it's hard to focus on that as his vision blackens and furls at the edges. He shakes his head, blinking and listing, grinding his teeth against the scattering buzz in his skull.

He can't afford to lose focus here just yet.

The fight isn't over, and one of the clerics should be by any minute now to fix him up-- he's sure of it. They have _two_ of them at the moment, so it's only a matter of time. Everything's going just fine. They have Lorenzo on the defensive and all his lackeys are dead. It's only a matter of time--

Caleb squints, looking out at the dimly lit battlefield to see Caduceus rushing towards the back of the chamber. He's unsure whether it's annoyance or exasperation that grates at him as the cleric hurries further away-- but if he dies down here because of that, he's going to have a few choice words for the firbolg in the afterlife. 

With his hopes momentarily scattered and with a prickle of nerves skittering up his spine, he turns his attention back to the others, assessing the situation best he can as they prepare for an inevitable reappearance from the slaver. Caleb briefly contemplates raising his hand, sending a small, cursory burst of flame at the last spot he saw Lorenzo, but a sudden swarm of lightheadedness and the sickening crawl of nausea in his gut has him reconsidering and settling further into the steps instead.

All too soon Keg is shouting again, running back towards the chambers near the stairs, and consequently him-- but the blood rushing and roaring in his ears is too loud to clearly hear her over. He numbly watches her point off to his left, just into the ensconced dark, where the sinister furnaces glow and growl a hellish red.

“Oh little girl, you're making crafting this nightmare _too_ easy."

Lorenzo's voice fills the air in a commanding rumble and everything erupts into a cascading, shit-storm of chaos as the last drawling note leaves him and the slaver flickers back into view. 

Caleb watches, frozen and stuck to the stone, as Beau unleashes two throwing stars with a flick of her wrist, the metal biting into the thick blue hide. The slaver doesn't even flinch as they strike true, ignoring the sluggish crawl of blood from the wounds as he moves his hands before him in a practiced pattern that can only be arcane.

The temperature in the room drops, a swirl of glacial light manifests between Lorenzo's fingers, and its mere presence generates an unnatural wind in the stagnant cellar. It unleashes in a subzero blast, ice flash-freezing across the ground in an instant, forming into deadly jutting sheets that skitter towards the others. And Caleb is caught, helpless and seated in a growing pool of his own blood as a familiar cone of cold consumes them all.

He remembers it blasting across the cart, half-freezing Nott and tolling out a serious amount of damage to all others in range. Remembers Molly falling shortly after that; a glaive embedded in his sternum, blood littering the dirt and the beginnings of snow in a scatter of liquid poppies.

The light fades away, back into dim hellish lighting, and all Caleb can focus on are the bodies of Beau, Shakäste, and Caduceus prone on the ground; _unmoving_. Frost coating their skin and clothes in ominous crystalized patches of white. They are unconscious, immobile; and it's an all too familiar scene.

He stares, unblinking at their immobile forms, a shrill ringing kicking up in his ears, and he's as equally frozen as they are in that moment. This calculation is far too easy to make-- and the result is not in his or any of their favors.

They just lost both their clerics, and arguably their heaviest hitter, all in one fell swoop. He is on his last leg-- in desperate need of a healer, and Nott on her own, toe to toe with a foe like Lorenzo, can only end terribly. 

He hears Keg’s enraged shouting, his attention drawn to the furious dwarf rushing forward, her weapons swinging wildly, uncontrolled and reckless. Lorenzo easily catches the hammer she tries to clobber him with, letting the axe bury into his side with little more than a twitch. He lifts her into the air by it, the dwarf’s legs kicking out futilely, refusing to relinquish her grip. Lorenzo leans in close, whispering something that has Keg’s eyes going wide as one large and calloused hand easily encircles her throat. She claws at his grip, face tear-stained, teeth bared in an ugly snarl as she scrabbles at the unyielding fingers. Lorenzo discards her war hammer with a flick of his wrist and it clatters to the stone with the clapping clang of metal. 

Nott yells something, snapping Caleb's attention to her as she rushes from her hiding place, only to stop short at the sight of her fallen companions. Her hands move to her hip (where Caleb knows a potion is ensconced away amongst stolen goods) before noticing Lorenzo with Keg caught in his grasp. She hesitates, glances his way, back to the others, and then to Lorenzo again before reaching for her crossbow.

He wants to yell out to her, tell her to shove that potion down one of the cleric's throats before it's too late for them all. But everything is happening far too quickly, and he's not sure he has the means to speak above a hoarse whisper anymore even if he tried. Nott is already moving before he can stop her anyways, and she takes up position between their fallen comrades and Lorenzo. Crossbow held aloft, fumbling fingers cranking back another bolt and Caleb’s own trembling hand rises in tandem with hers as she levels her weapon and aims. The bolt firing with a resounding clack at the same moment he unleashes a firebolt and he collapses back against the steps with a pained hiss. Hand spasming over the weeping gash across his front, rust-stained nails dragging into the sundered flesh as if it'll stop it from burning. 

Her bolt strikes true, his own firebolt exploding against the slaver's thick hide in a shower of sparks and cinders and Keg slips from the Lorenzo's grasp. Slams into the ground with the damning clatter of plate armor-- but she doesn't get back up. 

The hair on the nape of his neck rises, the drag of phantom nails claws its way down his spine and settles heavy and oppressive in his gut with the grinning and satisfied rumble the slaver turns to them. A cold chill seeps into his bones at the rattling realizations clattering around, chipped and jagged, in his skull. His fingers scrabble at the stone beneath him, clinging to the vestiges of futility still left here, even as the last of it lays unconscious and unmoving at Lorenzo's feet. 

Lorenzo laughs and it's all the chilling, gravelly confidence of a predator as he tears the bolt from his hide and ignores his still smoldering flesh. Eyes flicking between him and Nott, wounds beginning to knit closed in the eerily hushed silence of the chamber and Caleb curses whatever unholy fiend brought the slaver into existence.

If at least one cleric had remained standing they would have been fine. Beau probably would have been back up and securing this fight for all of them by stunning the bastard. But the clerics aren't moving and Nott is caught between trying to keep Lorenzo in her sights and wanting to run closer to the fallen three.

Caleb can practically see the goblin running the calculations in her head, anticipating Lorenzo to head for him first with how injured and easy to subdue the slaver would assume him to be. He curses that protective streak in her, wishing he could do more than lean against the stairs and try not to pass out. 

And he has a long list of regrets in that moment.

He mostly regrets not having brought more potions-- not opting to bring more reinforcements before stepping into the lion's den. Maybe then Lorenzo would already be a puddle of grease on the floor. 

They had not been prepared for this fight, Caleb can admit that much as he watches Lorenzo leer over an unmoving Keg. They got cocky with their easy success upstairs. The lower level thugs and the other magic users had been quick work for them-- and they hadn't anticipated anything like this. _He_ could never have anticipated things turning out like this. 

Whatever Lorenzo is-- it is something they could have never prepared for. 

Shouts, faint and distant, drift down the staircase and he grimaces. Somehow, someway, one of them has gotten word to someone on the outside to bring reinforcements. Caleb presses back against the steps, the harsh edge digging into his spine and he glances about at the dimsal scenario. Pinched in between unyielding stone and a monster, enemies closing in from above and below.He meets Nott’s eyes, the voices growing steadily louder from above. The same panicked look is exchanged between them, the tightening snare curled around both of their necks, and the distinct feeling of being completely and utterly unable to escape creeps in with each pounding footfall.

He sees her foot shift, hand twitching, and he knows she's fighting the urge to turn away. And he wishes she would. It would give her a chance to stabilize one of the clerics and for them to heal some of the others and continue this fight. Even if Lorenzo got to him while that happened it would be worth it-- because they might be able to win this and get the hell out of here-- and that's all he cares about right now. He has things he needs to do, things that don't involve dying at the hands of a towering fiend, or being enslaved and forced into irons either. 

“I won't kill you, not right away at least. You've got a lot to pay for.” Lorenzo rumbles, kicking the unconscious dwarf over onto her back.The fiend's eyes are two burning coals in the low shadows of the chamber when they turn to Caleb,“You, _and_ your new friends.” 

The voices from above are closer now and steps can be heard just at the top of the stairs. He looks back over to Nott, who is alternating between keeping her crossbow trained on Lorenzo and on whoever might come from behind Caleb. He tries to shout to her, tell her to just give one of the clerics a potion already and forget about him for now, but it only comes out as a harsh cough, and the wounds carved into him _scream_ in a lick of fire. He is left, shaking, blood curdling alongside the pain, glaring out at the dismal situation. 

He's angry that they let hubris get the best of them, he's angry that he's stuck in this situation, and he's _pissed_ these slavers had to take anyone in the first place. 

He wants to grind that smug grin off Lorenzo’s face with his heel, witness the Iron Shepherds smolder out of existence beneath his fingertips-- but instead he is trapped and cornered, bleeding out on the steps of a torture chamber with no fathomable route or possibility of escape. He is only able to watch with glazed eyes as the nightmare closes in, barely able to lift his arms or mutter a single incantation to try and defend himself.

But, it's not him that the slaver closes in on. 

Lorenzo’s steps are heavy and echoing in the quiet hush of the chamber as he turns to Nott instead. The goblin hisses out a warning at his approach, her snarl accompanied by a bolt that unleashes with a coughing _thwack_. But it’s like chucking pebbles at a stone giant for all the good it does. The bolt sinks into the slaver’s shoulder and he plucks it out with a jagged chuckle and an uncaring tilt to his lips. One that showcases those jutting tusks and every sharp pearlescent tooth, one that never falters, even as she fires another; her teeth bared and eyes wet.

The bolt goes wide this time, shattering against the stone wall beyond and Caleb can see her hands flex against the crossbow, can see the tremble of her frame beneath the too big cloaks. The barely restrained way she tries to hold herself together as Lorenzo looms over her.

“Nott-- The potion...” Caleb croaks out, strained and thready, but loud enough to do the trick. 

She dives for the nearest cleric, potion clutched in her fist, and Lorenzo growls, lunging for the goblin in turn, glaive already swinging. And the low rumbling resonance of the slaver's snarl sends Caleb's proverbial hackles raising. He grinds his teeth against it, eyes narrowing, hand raised and fingers blackening as he sends another bolt of fire arcing towards the slaver right as the handle of the glaive connects, sending Nott flying with a startled yelp.

She slams into the overturned and ice-slicked table with a whimpering cry that turns his stomach. Lorenzo stumbles, the fire bowling into his side, but remains standing, still focused on the goblin struggling to her feet. His face twisted into an ugly snarl, hands curled and white knuckled around the glaive while burns curl across his side and lick up his flesh. Nott quickly stumbles upright, swiping at her bloodied nose and smearing dark streaks across her lip and chin. Her crossbow managing to have escape mostly unscathed and she snatches it up from where it fell. Swinging it up to fire at the slaver’s throat in one fluid motion despite her shaking hands. 

Lorenzo easily deflects the weapon with his glaive, the bolt going wide, exploding into a shower of useless wood before the slaver swings the handle back down at her. The sickening crack has Caleb jolting forward, fingers trembling and eyes wide as her head snaps to the side and she stumbles back. Her crossbow slipping from her hands and clattering against the stone with all the finality of a trap snapping shut.

Caleb tries to stand-- to run to her, put himself between her and the brute, but he can barely get to his feet before he's collapsing to one knee, panting.

“Stop...” he breathes it out, quietly; desperately, pleading, fingers curling against the stone into quaking fists. 

She shakes her head, wobbling on her feet and biting out a snarl before trying to dart past the hulking figure, her hands curled into desperate claws. But she slips on a patch of frost, and Caleb can only watch as Lorenzo swings the glaive handle into the back of her head this time. Nott crumples and a startled cry strangles its way out of his throat, blood-slick fingers spasming against the stone. 

Lorenzo rests the blade against her neck and Caleb stiffens, muscles locking and staring at where it's perched dangerously across her jugular. The slaver tutts like he's merely scolding a wily dog he's trapped beneath his heel and Nott weakly snarls up at him, her nails scrabbling at the stone, eyes darting between him and Lorenzo. The slaver only bares his teeth back at her and laughs, low and vicious.

“Such blind devotion for your friends,” he drawls, lazily, amused. “It's almost admirable, if it weren't the very reason you landed yourself in this situation in the first place.” 

Lorenzo pins her down with one hulking boot and Caleb doesn't know what to do. There's an uncomfortable heat at the corner of his eyes and his chest aches as he watches her squirm and push against the slaver. Her hands scrabble sluggishly and disorientedly and he can tell she's desperate and using everything left in her to try and escape. A clawed green hand reaches towards him and he watches it, frozen and rattling apart. The slaver lazily flips around the glaive, ignoring her efforts, and slams it down one last time, the butt of it cracking against her temple with a pop.

Nott goes still.

An oppressive hush falls over the chamber and Caleb can only hear his own harsh breathing in the wake of it all.

“Like I said before, I don't know what you planned to accomplish here.” The slaver’s voice is unwelcome, and it slides against his nerves in a way that makes Caleb's fists clench and teeth grit. “I mean, to think you lot even had the _audacity_ to show your faces again after what happened the last time,” Lorenzo sneers, shaking his head. 

Laughter drips easily from the slaver and Caleb wants to rip it out of where it lingers in his ear, curled up and condescending. Lorenzo laughs like he didn't cut a short-lived man’s life shorter than it should have been just mere days ago. Like he isn't about to condemn them to a life's sentence of slavery. Lorenzo stalks towards him, steps slow and unhurried, a slouching predatory pace that's all kinds of unnerving and Caleb presses back against the steps, breath hitching. The glaive drags along the stone behind the slaver with an unnerving squeal of protesting steel, and he is so close now that Caleb can smell the reek permeating from him. It's a mixture of sweat-soaked leather and rotting corpse that would otherwise leave him gagging if he wasn't already two steps from unconsciousness. The slaver's lips split into a haunting grin the closer he gets and as Caleb stares up at the glint of gold and yellowed teeth, he swears there are still bits of decaying flesh caught between the grotesque incisors.

He has no witty remarks, no angered retorts, thoughts snapping with more primal one liners as the slaver stalks forward, unhurried. There's just a blankness born of a fear so primal and ingrained he can hardly think what to do other than put space between him and the monster. He tries desperately to hoist himself up the stairs, his entire torso protesting the action as he twists to ascend them. He ignores the way his vision whites out for a moment, instincts screaming at him to get away from Lorenzo at any cost as he claws at the steps, digs his heels into the stone and presses away from his approach.

And logically he knows he can't make it all the way up, but maybe he can put some distance between him and the slaver and think of what to do. He just needs some time to think and then he can come up with a plan, he knows he can, and if he can just buy himself some time he can save Nott. He can save all of them and they can get out of this place---

_He_ can get out of this place.

His progress is slow and clumsy as he tries to pull himself up the flight of stairs, hands slipping and sliding on the red slicked stone, chin striking the step as he fumbles and falls, breath a harsh whine from his lips. The footfalls behind him are claps of ominous thunder, and he doesn't know what to do as he looks up through a hazy, wavering film to see figures descending the stairs above him as well.

He wants to scream his frustration into the stone beneath him--the image of Nott’s crumpled form on the floor of the torture chamber below skittering across his thoughts. 

He should have run- he should have just taken Nott and _ran away_ after Molly died. 

He still doesn't know why he didn't. 

 

He barely makes it up two more steps before he is yanked back by the scruff of his coat. The fabric pulls uncomfortably at his arms and the wounds carved into him and he yelps--the sound ashamedley akin to a dog as he's hoisted up. He's turned around to face the grinning slaver and Caleb bares his teeth, spits a collection of saliva and blood at him, legs kicking out for a foothold, hands scrabbling uselessly at the fist holding him aloft. 

The slaver just raises a brow at the feral display, leaning in close and chuckling. “Funny that you'd try and abandon your friends now that you know you've lost.” 

Caleb flinches away from Lorenzo's fetid breath and the accusation that he would ever abandon Nott in a situation like _this_ , but guilt curls and wells in that putrid part of him that knows the thought had crossed his mind. 

“It's too late for that now anyhow. You signed your soul over the second you stepped within these walls.”

And Lorenzo’s gaze never leaves him, containing all the empathy of a man who plucks a butterfly’s wing just to watch it fly in endless, broken circles. Only satisfied when it flutters down, tired and helpless, to slowly die as a sharp splash of color against the dirt. Caleb tries to maintain his glaring eye contact, but his vision starts to tunnel. The vestiges of adrenaline barely keeping him running and he blearily watches figures-- trademarked by their blotches of dull color, pass by and into the chamber beyond. Lorenzo roughly shakes him back to full awareness and his heart leaps, startled and racing, blinking and wide-eyed at the stone beneath his dangling feet.

The slaver wants him to watch apparently.

And Caleb does. He watches with wide eyes as the figures kneel down beside each of the fallen bodies, tending to those that haven't already perished, and all too soon there's even more thugs descending the stairs. 

The distinct and unforgettable sound of chains rings in his ears as more join the others and he tastes iron in his mouth. A heavy feeling consuming him now that the full severity of the situation has begun to settle in. Lorenzo seems all too aware of his mounting realization and the slaver shifts, ensuring that Caleb has a full view of the others as they are shackled and dragged, mercifully, or perhaps unmercifully, stabilized into the now open cells at the back. 

He zeroes in on Nott amongst them. Her wrists dwarfed by the monstrous cuffs that now encircle them, a snaking, sinister chain connecting them to the ones around her ankles. He can only watch as she's dragged across the ground and away from him. Into the yawning darkness of a cell he cannot possibly see into from here and he feels like he's failed her in some incomprehensible and unforgivable way. 

He feels like he's failed them all.

Lorenzo’s eyes never leave him, even as he barks orders and speaks in low notes to the reinforcements. Caleb's skin crawls beneath the unwanted scrutiny, but he can't bring himself to look back at the slaver, still staring at where he saw Nott swallowed up by darkness. 

He doesn't want to see the promises of pain that lurks amongst those depths anyways. He isn't given much of a choice though. Lorenzo grabs his chin, the harsh rasp of his skin sending Caleb's skin crawling, and the slaver forces his gaze back up to his. Caleb’s lip lifts in a reflexive snarl at the unwarranted manhandling and Lorenzo leans in close-- and he surprised by the unrestrained cruelty he finds there amongst the slaver's features, the stench from earlier now suffocating. 

“You and your friends made me kill half my cargo on the way here you know. So unfortunately, as it stands, I'm a bit short on goods at the moment,” the slaver explains in a low and threatening rumble, now practically nose to nose with him. 

His heart skitters, the muscle beating a frantic tattoo against his ribs. Thoughts spiraling into a tangled, inescapable net of dread at what Lorenzo is implying. 

“But, I think you lot will do nicely as a replacement for what you cost me.” Lorenzo drawls before finally dropping him.

He slams into the stone with a choked off cry, the wounds in his torso and side pulsing and he rolls onto his back to escape it, ribs heaving. Shivering and shaking, fingers digging into the stone work and a strange coldness filling him despite the scorching heat from his torn flesh. As if his muscles are melting off his bones and freezing solid all at once, and he can practically feel his nerves cracking into pieces beneath his skin. 

“Who knows, I might even stick to my promise to keep you all as my personal pets,” the slaver continues noncommittally in a low drawl, settling the handle of the reclaimed glaive against the largest wound on Caleb's torso before pushing down and _twisting._

The wood pulls, ripping and grinding its way into him. And a low keening whine slips from him alongside the welling answer of ichor as he scrabbles at it, nails bending dangerously, digging into the wooden handle with an animalistic desperation. He spits and snarls up at Lorenzo, hissing and curling jnto himself, squirming beneath the glaive. The sound of clanking chains sticking into his skull like the tolling of funeral bells and the weight on his ribs settles like impossible stones as he writhes under it.

“Stabilize this one, but let it fester,” Lorenzo says, lip curled in disgust, the glowing red in his eyes fading away. “We don't reward cowards here.”

The pressure on his ribs is finally released and Caleb gasps, grasping at the slow trickle of blood from the abused wound, hardly able to make out the slaver's face through the splotches of black swarming him. Caleb's still oddly, horrifyingly transfixed when Lorenzo’s whole form begins to shrink inwards, the blue slowly fading into a familiar shade of tanned skin. The transformed slaver is however, quickly swallowed up from view as his reinforcements rush in around him, supplies in hand. 

Hands grab at him and he mercifully fades in and out of consciousness as his wounds are hastily wrapped. There are murmurs drifting about around him and he thinks he sees them drag out the bodies of Prado and Ruza, but he can't be sure. He drifts along in the haze for a spell, things continuing to revolve about him.

And for a blissful, merciful moment he forgets he's halfway to unconsciousness in a slaver's den. Maybe he's just three quarters into sleep, laying on a hay-scented mattress at a shitty inn, with a purring cat settled on his chest, and a goblin curled up at the foot of the bed. He feels himself drift further away, slipping into a more comfortable dream at the thought, ignoring the loss of his coat, the book harnesses. The strange rasp of gauze sliding across his skin turns into the pleasant weight of well-worn cotton sheets and the nightmare bleeds away around him. Even the hellish glow of the furnaces warps into warm and flickering candlelight and---

He's thrown back into reality with the chilled bite of metal on his wrist. His jerks his arm away and the unfastened manacles skitter across the stone with an echoing clatter. He scrambles away from the unnamed slavers crouched around him, their faces warping and shifting into fiends in the dark.One of them finally reclaims the chains and shouts orders to the others, each of them recovering from their momentary shock. They leap at him and he tries to swing at one, but hands quickly seize his wrists and ankles-- and all too quickly he's pinned against the unforgiving stone. He pushes against them, nails cutting crescents into his palms, muscles trembling with his efforts and formless curses leaving him. 

A manacle finally snaps around his left wrist and he feels his head start to fill with a constant ringing whine. The way it feels like his throat is closing up with the click of another is suffocating, and his chest brims with a black and viscous frustration that threatens to spill over. He burns with the desire to yell at them, snarl out obscenities, and spit in their faces. He wants to show them that he he can bite back, that he won't be so easily caged and tamed, yet he remains quiet and trembling on his side even as the final manacle clicks into place.

He wishes in that moment, when they move to slip the gag over his head, that he could tap into all that pent up anger and cynicism he favors as his shield. Wishes that he could bark out one last biting remark, one last vindictive _“fuck you_ ” at them as they strip his last inch of freedom from him- but, he can't. He can't think past whatever slopping mess of gray matter his brain has melted into as he finds himself hogtied and unable to move, the taste of grime and dirt filling his mouth with the muzzle shoved into it.

Boots suddenly fill his vision and his eyes trail up the cracked and scuffed leather armor to meet Lorenzo’s. Caleb grinds his teeth against the bit, lips peeling back in a silenced snarl at the slaver. Lorenzo just tsks, crouching down and picking up one of his books that had been confiscated some time during the scuffle. The slaver takes a moment to thumb through it, scanning the pages before snapping it shut with a startling clap.

“Blindfold it for now. We can't be too cautious with these types at first-- and take these up, we'll see just what it's capable of and figure out how to handle it from there,” Lorenzo orders, tossing the book to someone out of sight. 

The way the slaver continues to talk about him makes Caleb feel like a caged dog on display; never talked at, but always squabbled over while others trade bets and place wagers on how long he'll survive. And it sends a smoldering frustration coiling just beneath his sternum.Logically, he knows he should be terrified at the prospect of losing his vision along with everything else, but he can't bring himself to truly contemplate the consequences. He stares up at his captor and digs into that coal-hot fury with everything he has. 

They imprisoned his friends. 

They killed Mollymauk.

_They killed his cat_.

And now, they are taking the spellbooks he labored heart and soul over to do gods know what with and he wants to see them all _burn_. Even as a muscle deep ache starts up at the back of his eyes he refuses to break eye contact with Lorenzo, only the cloth that's pulled over his face finally shattering their stand off. 

And in the ensuing, muffled darkness, with flecks of red seeping through the fabric from the burning light of the distant furnaces, Caleb breathes a silent promise into the black.

_He will kill Lorenzo._

The chains pull taut and he's dragged across the ground, pulled over the now abandoned battlefield. Small lingering shards of ice dig into every exposed inch of skin, and it’s mere moments before unseen hands hoist him up and he's cast out into the great and sprawling unknown of what he can only assume is the wide, steel-barred, maw of a cell.

His eyes rove wildly behind the blindfold, searching for anything, but he is only met with a swallowing darkness, no longer able to even see the oddly comforting bits of invading light from the furnaces. 

The metallic teeth snap shut behind him and he finds himself trapped in the belly of the beast. 


	2. Tagged

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **mild spoilers  but also trigger warnings for chapter contents: **  
>    
> In this chapter;  
> graphic descriptions of: branding and teeth pulling.  
> \- There is also the general dubious consenty/ non consenty feeling of slavery and not being in autonomous control of your body, manhandling , etc.  
>  
> 
> **  
> **  
> 

Caleb wakes up to the dark.

A fever has settled across his brow and what feels like pools of magma have bubbled up from the sundered flesh of his torso over night. He shivers, muscles trembling as they hunt for a lost warmth to leech back into his bones, but they can't seem to find it, no matter how hard he rattles.

The only spot of relative warmth is curled at his back.

An equally shaking form has shuffled closer at some point, their smaller hands awkwardly cupped in his own frigidly numb ones behind his back. The rasp of old bandages and roughened skin betrays them as Nott’s. And he wonders how much maneuvering about she had to do to be able to rest her hands even close to his with how they're tied up. Yet somehow, in spite of the odds, the small goblin has managed it. 

His chest swells with a quiet fondness. 

He doesn't quite know how or when he had gained her loyalty and devotion so fiercely and completely, but in this moment he is grateful for even the smallest bit of comfort. Even if a small, shriveled voice in the back of his head croons about how he doesn't deserve it.

Something clangs against the steel bars and he flinches at the sharp ring of metal . 

“Wakey-wakey. Boss says we gotta start breaking the newbies in,” Their voice is raspy and grating, throat laced with a thousand rattling nails. 

“Grab the green one first.” He hears another bite out and wander off with the scuff of boots. 

The door lock disengages with a heavy click and the screeching hinges are deafening amongst the relative quiet. He listens closely for their footsteps, the hair on his nape rising, and eyes roving frantically behind the blindfold. The anticipated rap of boots on stone is matched by the unexpected drag of something heavy and wooden, and further off he can hear the faint shifting and clattering of metal. It's reminiscent of the distant homely sound of a table being set, but he has the distinct feeling they won't be served a warm meal at this one. 

“Boss-man says you killed Ruzza." The thug’s voice is laced with curdling venom-- and it doesn't sound like she's addressing him. “And I don't much think you should live for that, but sadly I don't have the final say ‘round here.” 

Caleb tenses and shifts closer to Nott. He's unsure of what the thug is willing to do within the limits of her orders and Nott is still asleep based on her non reaction to this; blissful and unawares of the leering threat. Even without his vision he can almost _feel_ the thug standing there, her anger nearly palpable as he does his best to shield Nott from whatever she might do. 

“Cute,” she sneers out before something smashes into his ribs.

His side immediately _ignites_ and he strains against the bonds, a keening yelp twisting its way past the cloth gag between his teeth. The sound of Nott stirring awake behind him is far too loud now and the muffled, unintelligible questioning sound she forces out hangs in the air, unanswered as the sole of a boot grinds down into his cheek and presses his face into the stone.

“He told us ‘bout you, _wizard_ ,” the thug bites out, her attention diverted from a thrashing Nott, and Caleb starts to question if that's a good thing when the heel digs in further. More muffled obscenities swarm the air around him and he's sure that the others can see her using him like her own personal foot rest. “Says you ran from him like some piss scared dog,” She snarls and he struggles against the manacles as she presses down harder.

Prismatic splotches of light dance behind his eyelids as he bucks and thrashes against his chains, the steel biting viscously into his wrists and he grapples with the breath trapped in his chest. It feels like his skull is about to crack-- his brain close to splattering across the cell in a mess of slopping red bits, and he feels something in his jaw start to pop, and creak, and- 

“Lida, stop fucking around and get the goblin!” 

He hears her growl before backing off with a final irritated scuff to his cheek, grabbing Nott’s chains with the harsh rustle of metal as she goes. He sucks in a relieved breath, slumped and quivering against the stone and feverishly blinking away the flecks of red and green that still dart about in the black. The telltale drag of a body follows the slaver out, the door slamming shut behind her with the ominous ring of steel.

The pounding in his skull starts to fade and the invading dancing colors dissipate into a strange lack of complete and utter darkness. He can make out the tinges of ruddy red from the furnaces in the back, accompanied by a lone torch in the sconce closest to the table, the mingling lights casting the figures below in a hellish ambience. 

Caleb figured the thug would have been a half-elf like Ruzza, assuming that the woman’s animosity with Nott stemmed from a familial connection, but the woman in the torchlight is a surly half-orc, with a heavy hitter frame and a close shaved mohawk of black hair. She is nothing remotely close to the aggravating bard they killed. He doesn't know exactly how Ruzza fits into all this, but he's afraid none of it bodes well as the half-orc makes her way towards the furnaces.She returns quickly and the orange and white-hot glow stands out amongst the elongated shadows. There's a freshly heated branding iron clutched in her meaty fist and a smirk pulled around her tusks. And Caleb almost wishes the blindfold hadn't been dislodged as he figures out what they're doing. 

The burning smell of flesh hits him first.

It curls up on his tomgue and it's one he recalls so intimately he has to stop himself from heaving at the memories it dredges up. Nott’s strangled keening cry chases the stench, lingering hauntingly in the chamber and it dissolves into a broken hiccuping sound that twists him into pieces.

“Look, she's already cryin’!” Lida draws the still red hot branding iron back, disgustingly delighted by all of it. 

Caleb adds another name to his list. Right under Lorenzo.

“Stop it,” the other snarls, disengaging the table restraints, and working nimbly to get Nott back into her old ones, “And bring the others. _Quickly_ this time.” 

Caleb moves as close as he can manage to Nott’s trembling form the second she's tossed back in. Her eyes widen when she sees that his blindfold has been skewed and he watches her frustratedly blink away the remaining tears. She grinds her cheek into the grit and grime to get rid of any evidence they had existed in the first place and his chest twists painfully. He stops her, resting his forehead against hers in lieu of the fact his hands are trapped behind him. 

He wants nothing more in that moment than to apologize. 

Breath out how shitty he is into the dark where it can twist and fester and devour him later. Tell her that her tears don't make her weak, that she doesn't deserve any of this, that he should have known they weren't ready to face Lorenzo yet, that they'll get out of here together, all of them- but his voice is trapped behind the muzzle and all he can do is listen to her quietly sniffle. 

He’s unsure how long they lay there, drawing what comfort from this quiet solidarity they can. Jumping with each sharp sizzle of burning sinew and Caleb tenses at each accompanied muffled cry as his cell mates are branded one after the other just beyond the bars. 

And he's felt helplessness before, but this is different. 

This digs and carves into every part of him and leaves him feeling hollow and empty, and even though it isn't him out there yet, with his flesh melting against molten iron, it feels like he's taken every single one of theirs as his own. 

And suddenly it's his turn.

Lida either doesn't notice or doesn't care that the blindfold has mostly come off at this point and heaves him up and out of the cell with an annoyed snarl. 

“Strap him down, but leave him. Boss-man said he'd handle this one himself. Something about cowards needing a ‘special touch’,” He hears the other thug, a dusty haired and pale skinned human, say as he's yanked towards the table.

“Honestly, I just think the boss gets off on this,” he grumbles, securing Caleb down before backing off, still mumbling under his breath, lip visibly curling in disgust, “... fuckin’ freak.” 

“Oh come on, Kyt. Where's the fun in it if ya can't enjoy it jus’ a little?” Lida jibes back, slugging the other in the arm. 

Caleb has the distinct feeling this is an argument they've had before, in a very similar situation, as if there wasn't a humanoid strapped to a torture table between them. 

Kyt’s name gains a spot on the slowly growing list, right behind Lida’s. 

It's some time after the two leave before he hears heavy thudding steps descending the stairs. It's a hauntingly familiar gait. One that speaks of a beast that far outweighs its visible frame and form. Like there's something far greater caged just beneath it's flesh. And all too soon the bald visage of Lorenzo appears, haloed in red at the mouth of the stairs, looking far more like a devil than when horns had curled back from his skull and tusks tore from his cracked and snarling lips. 

Fear and anger war beneath his sternum as the slaver approaches. He pales when he sees the garish pink of Jester’s haversack clutched in the slaver’s grasp. 

_God verdammt_ , he had forgotten he'd even had that terrible thing during the battle. 

A terrible weight settles across his shoulders.

Lorenzo stalks closer, saying nothing and tearing the blindfold off from where it's hiked up to Caleb’s hairline, tossing it aside like he hadn't expected it to stay anyways, like he had planned to rip it off himself no matter what so that Caleb could see just what he was holding. His wonders if the slaver knows he's almost useless without his spell components and hands being freed. That no deity will be coming to answer his prayers, that the earth won't rise to answer his pleas, and his blood won't grant him his wish to see the slaver’s eyes burn from his skull. 

He fears for what has been done to his work and if Lorenzo knows just how much of himself is tied into those pages. 

He has a feeling he does. 

 

The slaver heads for the assorted array of sharp and hooked instruments adorning the wall beside the still flickering torch, some are familiar to Caleb, and others he's never seen before. Tools for breaking, not extracting. Nothing about this is refined. This isn't about gaining information, it's about creating a sellable product. About breaking. It's something even he doesn't have experience in. And as he watches Lorenzo hang the haversack amongst the implements, ensuring that it is highly noticeable to them all-- Caleb knows he's out of his depth here.

“Things like these are _mighty_ hard for a ragtag crew such as yourselves to come by,” Lorenzo drawls after a long moment of silence, “even ones as- unappealing as this.” Lorenzo looms closer, “And it makes me curious, just what could be inside?” 

Caleb’s brow furrows. The slaver could always just turn it inside out or slash it open, and even if he wasn't privy to such a simpleton method, he could take it to an arcane specialist, even a simple enchanter, and find out what was inside in a _snap_. 

Maybe it was already empty and he was just taunting them with it, trying to suss out if there had been anything valuable in it to begin with. 

It's impossible to tell from here and Lorenzo definitely knows it. 

If he hadn't turned it out yet (and even if he had) the slaver probably wanted to use it as a means of leverage against them. _Against him_ , since it definitely didn't go unnoticed that he had been the one carrying it. 

And Lorenzo seems like a man who enjoys holding all the cards. Draws his thrills from playing each one with a cold and calculated precision that makes his enemies squirm.

And for whatever reason he has picked the haversack as one of his aces. 

Bluff or not it _was_ working, because he's sweating at the thought of Lorenzo getting ahold of the Dodecahedron. Whatever it's capable of, and whatever power it holds that has an entire empire vying for it has to be something that should _never_ fall into the slaver’s hands. 

“I'll get it out of one of you eventually,” It's a promise, Caleb can tell in the way a sure smile slides across his lips, his eyes a hungry flint. 

Lorenzo picks up the branding iron and a devastated kind of resigned coldness curls up in Caleb's gut at the sight. Bits of charred flesh have stuck to the metal, bile creeping up his throat at the sight. The slaver brushes the flecks off with the practiced ease of someone who has done this a thousand times before.His eyes track the slaver the whole time, straining to watch him stalk his way towards the sinister glow of the furnaces. Hands curling into clawed fists when Lorenzo returns, the dangerous red-orange glow of heated metal in his grip.

Lorenzo draws even closer and he strains reflexivley against the cuffs, pleading silently for any kind of miracle.The slaver ignores his squirming and pins his wrist to the wood, fanning his hand out. Caleb gnashes at the bit, struggling renewed with the approaching heat that breathes across his right hand in a sharp warning. He fights with everything he has, chest heaving and frame straining against the metal cuffs. The brand presses closer and closer, unhalted, and his mind is gripped by a numbing animalistic drive to escape the inevitability of pain here. Lorenzo’s grip is merciless and unyielding and suddenly there's a low desperate unstoppable whine clawing its way out of him.

Theres nothing for a terrible yawning moment and then he sees white. 

Smells fat and flesh burning, and he bucks at the restraints, spine arching and nails gouging into the wood, beads of red welling as quicks bend. It feels like his flesh is sloughing off into puddles of liquid fire around him. Like he's been submerged in lava or dropped into hell and raked back out over the hot coals. Every nerve ending ignites and screams at him to _get. It. Off_ , and he thinks he's screaming, but he can't tell, his world melting into a raucous mantra of pleading thoughts and fire. It's not the worst thing he's ever felt-- but he wants it off-- needs it off--

The slaver suddenly tears it off and skin goes with it, melted and warped to the rapidly cooling metal. He sags against the table panting and head rolling, trying to ignore the burn arcing up and down his arm and fighting the urge to vomit with each inhale of his own seared flesh. A hand pats at his cheek, disturbing the damning and involuntary wet troughs that he can feel carved down them. 

__

__

“Stay with me now. We ain't done here just yet,” the slaver croons, holding up a pair of heavily tarnished and rust stained pliers. 

Caleb stares blankly at the crude tool. It's blunt and archaic and unwelcome. He had hoped he would be granted the same small mercy the others had received and be returned to the dark to anxiously await more of the inevitable. And gods, does he want nothing more than to lay down in the quiet solace of the cell and think about how much he doesn't want to be here while his old wounds fester and his new one blisters and burns. 

But, he doesn't deserve those same small comforts- does he? 

_No_.

“Now, if I hear anything even _resembling_ a word from you I will not hesitate to carve that tongue of yours right out. Damaged goods are still marketable goods after all,” Lorenzo raises a brow, smirking knowingly, “But, I feel like you and me both want to avoid that.” 

Caleb goes still, suppressing the desire to flex his fingers in a mockery of soothing the tight burn of flesh there. The threat sinks in and sticks; viscous and hard to argue with. 

He doesn't know exactly what Lorenzo plans to do, but he has a pretty good idea based on the tool he's picked up. 

The gag slips off and Caleb's head is forced to the side. The grip on his cheeks bruising, blunt nails digging in and pinching the flesh between his teeth as his jaw is pried open. The pliers click unsettlingly against bone, settling on a molar towards the back before clamping down. A tremor wracks through him and he thinks he knows how much it'll hurt, he's pulled a few teeth before at least-- and so he braces for it.

Lorenzo yanks his hand back and he's bathed in white again.

It's an indescribable tidal wave of agony as the root tears free. The nerve severing with a wet pop in one practiced go, leaving behind an empty, gaping pocket of angry flesh that burns in tandem with the brand on his right hand. He can barely choke out a sound before he's muzzled again, blood filling his mouth and the tang of iron invading his nostrils. He breathes harshly, each shaky, wet inhale of damp air a grave mistake as it grinds against the vacated socket. But he can't stop, not as he stares up at Lorenzo idly picking at the flesh stuck to the tooth- _his tooth_ , before pocketing it.

“Just a little something I like to collect as a reminder." Lorenzo starts to unbuckle the restraints, careful to replace each one with the manacles as he goes. “And don't worry, I'll get theirs too.” The slaver pauses as if recalling something before a satisfied smirk curls his lip, “As a matter of fact, I got your half-beast friend’s already.” 

Lorenzo seems proud, smug even. Bragging about a collection of humanoids’ teeth like Caleb might brag about a collection of well-read novels. 

It's in that moment he's reminded that Lorenzo isn't just some run of the mill jerk-off with a penchant for torturing people. That he's not even Ikithon, training tools of the Empire to pry informatiom from unyielding mouths. That Lorenzo is seasoned in the art of dehumanizing. A practiced predator with a trophy collection of spoils that probably dates back years. Decades even. 

This isn't even a wayward teacher pushing his students to their very limits with cruel forms of punishment. Using methods best saved for the young and the impressionable, both of which Caleb was once. No, this man- this thing, knows how to utterly and irrevocably break someone down into their basest and most malleable form, before sending them off to be molded like clay by their new master’s hands. 

And Lorenzo would do it all with a smile, hand extended for a pouch of coins in exchange for a sentient life. 

They're just numbers to him. Experiments, even-- less than that really. Just new bodies and minds to test out and sharpen his methods against, so that he can break the next ones _faster_. Lorenzo probably knows every possible way to break the body. How much force to apply where, to snap what. How best to bruise, to bleed, to kill. 

But, it's the mind that breaks in such unpredictable and terrifying ways. 

Caleb witnessed the way others fragmented during his lucidity at the asylum and no two ever snapped the same. Their psyche cracking into chunks, shattering into pieces, or crumbling to ashes. Semi-coherent, brain-dead, paranoid, fearful, anxious, savage, compliant; all of them with their own unique menagerie of insanity. All of them deemed unfit for society. 

And Lorenzo is a man who will would toy with the way he can snap a mind with each new slave he acquires. Forever experimenting with just how he can push a man over that precarious edge and tumbling into a state of unyielding compliance. 

And he probably never tires of it. 

Hungers for it even. 

The fear, the satisfaction, the _power_. 

He tremors beneath the restraints and the oppressive way Lorenzo watches him, seemingly enraptured with how he is rattling to pieces in his own head. The satisfied tilt to the slaver’s lips chills his skin and he can feel whatever tangled choking mess his thoughts have become begin to suffocate him beneath their weight.

This story has two endings that he can foresee. 

Either their physical bodies give first or their minds.

And truthfully _he's_ not even sure which one would be worse here. 

Lorenzo seizes the back of his neck and bodily lifts him from the table, cutting off his morbid ruminations, and Caleb's ashamedly relieved when he's dropped onto the floor and the chain linking his wrists and ankles grabbed up instead. The sensation of those fingers curled around his neck sends phantom chills trailing down his spine that settle uneasily in his gut. It's the simple act of the slaver’s fingers resting against his pulse, nearly able to wrap about the column of his throat and snap or squeeze the life out of him that unnerved him the most. And it is not one he wants to invite back anytime soon. 

Unfortunately, he isn't dropped back inside as soon as the door swings open like he expected, like he hoped and wanted so badly. Instead Lorenzo continues to the back, past his watchful and wary cellmates and through the heavy and stagnant stench of burnt flesh that has him taking shallow breaths. 

He's set up on his knees near the back wall, nerves a tight and rattling ball in his gut and thighs quivering beneath the strain. The stressful position the restraints already force him into only worsening as the slaver fiddles with his chains, just out of view. Sweat beads along his brow, eyes flicking about the cell before the metallic click of the manacles releasing has him bringing his aching arms forward, confused and quiet. He rubs at the raw angry lines circling them, shoulders hunched. 

He barely has the chance to mull over what somatic incantations he knows before Lorenzo snatches his arm, pulling him to his feet and then some. He yelps behind the gag, shoulder sliding and straining against the socket, toes just barely brushing the ground, able to stand just enough. His forearm is shoved into a manacle dangling along the wall and it snaps shut eagerly, biting into the tender skin. The other is forced into an accompanying one with the same eager snap. 

He dangles there, arms forced into an uncomfortable ‘Y’ above his head, steadily emptying gaze turned to his bare feet, watching numbly as the chains drag along his ankles.

Lorenzo still doesn't leave. 

Fingers card through his hair, parodying a sick tenderness before they tighten and his head is yanked back. Lorenzo is staring at him, the slaver’s eyes flitting over his face in a way that is reminiscent of a man inspecting cattle and Caleb watches, wary, unsure of what the slaver will find there. And he must find _something_ because the grip leaves just as suddenly. The phantom feeling of fingers twisted into the strands still skittering across his scalp and a putrid uncomfortable unease seeps into every gnarled corner of him. 

Lorenzo leaves, the barred door slamming with a final toll of metal and Caleb sags against the chains. The footfalls fade into a ringing, gnawing quiet and he hides his gaze amongst the predictable stones below. 

He can practically feel their eyes on him now. Hear the unspoken questions behind each of their forced silences. Can imagine the fearful tension they had endured when they figured out Lorenzo had the haversack.

And a part of him fears that their stares are accusatory.

He can feel all of the compounding uncertainties hanging over him like a faulty guillotine, the blade rusted and halted halfway down, still very capable of screeching the rest of the way down at any moment. 

“C-lb?” 

It's so garbled and quiet he can barely make it out as his name, but it's unmistakably Nott who manages to shatter the quiet. 

He lifts his head.

Shes kneeling best she can in her bonds in front of him, looking up to where he hangs. There are wet tracks sliding their way down her cheeks and her brow is a crumpled, wrinkled mess. Her cloak has been torn from her shoulder, the exposed skin angry and raised, turned a ghostly pustule white where it should be green. 

He breathes out, low and angry, looking over each of them.

They are all marked with brands of their own, clothes ripped or torn to make room for the iron. A collar of purple encircles Keg’s throat and the others are battered in their own ways, flesh splashed in a sinister bruised painting. 

He does not see Yasha, Beauregard, or the firbolg among them. 

He flexes his hand, unwilling to look at his own mar of deadened flesh. He knows what he'll find there. Two parallel lines with a precise “X” slashed through them glaring back like an angry stretch of barbed wire across the tendons. 

It's presence is far heavier than the chains. 

It reminds him, with it’s glaring and bloodied lines, that he's trapped and caged again. That he's someone else's property to pull apart and put back together as they please. To do with what they will. A thing to break and bend and batter until he outlives his use.

And he knows that even if they do escape it will _always_ be there. Like the puckered lines that curl across his back and arms; the buried tale of what happened here, what _will_ happen here, will be forever etched into his skin. Ensuring that he won't ever forget even as time dulls the memories from his thoughts. 

 

The torch is dying now.

The faint light cast into the cell has waned into a swallowing darkness as time trudges on. The way he's chained up makes it difficult to breathe and his chest rattles with an alarming wetness. He struggles to ease that pain beneath his ribs and trapped in his torso, periodically attempting to hoist himself higher with the manacles, form trembling. The glaive wounds well with an ugly fetid warmth and he works to suppress the mucous laced cough he can feel bunched at the back of his throat. He knows, at the least, that if they leave him lke this for too long, he will slowly die... 

Nott has moved so she's curled up near his dangling feet. At first he thinks she's asleep, but the occasional shudder of her shoulders and sharp sniffle betrays her. Jester watches him with wide, wet, searching eyes like she can see the infection beginning to take root beneath his tattered clothes. Fjord is beside her, but he's looking out at the pink haversack, brow furrowed. Shakäste’s turned away, the only one who appears to be sleeping as his side rises and falls steadily, methodically.

Keg isn't looking at any of them. Her face is downturned where she's sagged against the far corner and Caleb thinks he can see a faint shine on her cheeks. 

He wonders if she blames herself for their current situation. 

He knows she shoulders Molly’s death and maybe she isn't wrong to do so, but Caleb also blames himself. No matter how much Nott told him it wasn't his fault.

There were so many things they could have done differently, so many things they could have done to avoid such a confrontation in the first place if he had just been level headed about things. If he had just been more practiced with his magic, stronger, quicker, faster, smarter, _everything_.

Not to mention his first instinct had been to run as soon as it had turned into a nightmare. The need to survive had overwhelmed him as he watched the purple tiefling’s blood spray across the peppering of snow and dirt in a miasma of gore. The conjured image of Nott impaled at the end of the curving glaive, jaw slack and eyes empty; accusatory, had terrified him and he had been fully prepared to run with the goblin in tow. The other two be damned in that moment. 

He had almost talked himself into running the night before it happened. Breathed out how he had things far grander than those around him to accomplish. Thought about how it wasn't worth risking his life, that none of this would matter, wouldn't exist or even occur, once he was able to bend the world to his will. Confided in the fire light that they weren't worth all of this, that he was confused that he was still with there, still with them, when they had nothing to offer him in the end. 

He had stayed up until the sun broke the horizon that night.

Something had held him back, tethered him to the ideas and shapes of them and Nott had tried to get him to say it, but he locked it behind his teeth and swallowed it back where it could continue to fester and writhe as they trudged onwards. 

And gods, does he _know_ he shouldn't allow himself to become close to any of them. Not if he wants to be able to walk away from them when the time comes. 

But, at the same time, some part of him-- that lonely, scared-- buried part of him, had latched itself onto this colorful splash of individuals with a terrifying eagerness the moment they offered the smallest shred of kindness and understanding. Sometimes he wishes, with everything he is, that he could just carve it out of his chest, knows it would be far easier to not care about any of them, but it's fastened alongside the part of him that remembers his parent’s love before he turned it to ash. 

It's the same part of himself that burns knowing that he had been ready to abandon them a second time. The same part of himself that thinks he might just deserve every bruise, every hurt that Lorenzo could ever lay into his flesh. 

 

He hangs there, letting the quiet devour him as he thinks about splashes of red against lilac and watches the shadows grow and twist along the ground towards him. Tries to succumb to the restless sleep tugging at his eyelids for some time, limbs heavy, breathing shallow and he falls towards it, yearning for a short reprieve even if he knows it's dangerous here, strung up like this---

A sharp hum has his head snapping up.

He squints into the dark, trying to make out the source , the sound seeming to grow and fade sporadically.A dark shape darts across his vision, darker than the shadows climbing into the cell and dripping down its walls.

It stops in front of him. 

The faint shimmer of iridescent feathers is just visible in the last lingering dredges of torch light and Caleb stares uncomprehendingly at the tiny bird hovering in front of him.


	3. A Taste of Freedom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter: 
> 
> -Discussions and depictions of a character's canonical death.
> 
> -Brief depictions of dislocated limb and semi-improper relocation procedure

Caleb realizes, looking into the far too intelligent eyes of the hummingbird, that Shakäste hadn't been sleeping like he had first assumed. 

The cleric has been watching and listening, gathering this whole time. The thin, slicing glint of metal in the hummingbird’s beak is a strange mirror of the first time he had seen it as it flits back towards the shock of white hair. Something light and airy thrums in his chest when the bird drops the makeshift pick into Shakäste’s outstretched palm, and the cleric gets to work, hands clumsy and shaking.

The snap of metal sends his stomach plummeting, but soon enough Shakäste is shucking off the chains. The manacles clatter to the stone and the cleric stretches his arms above his head, rolling his shoulders, the joints popping and creaking with disuse. The Grand Duchess reclaims her usual perch, head tilting about and feathers ruffling as the cleric removes his gag. 

“Guess they didn't learn after the first time,” Shakäste smirks, caramel and honey smooth as ever despite the circumstances. 

Caleb watches him limp towards each of his companions in turn, easily removing their gags as he goes, before finally stopping at him. He can see the Grand Duchess inspecting him in lieu of Shakäste’s own misted over eyes, a concerned frown tugging at the man’s weathered features.

The blood stained cloth is peeled away and Caleb can hear him praying, the words lost to him as they ebb and weave into the air. The aches that pepper him start to dull, and he swears he can almost feel the heat-filled cuts along his torso start to knit shut. The brand and burning hole in his gums still pulsing thickly, untouched by the magic. The chills of his mounting fever are only tied back for now, but he can feel it bucking at the rope, a frayed inch from breaking free. 

It's overall, not much, but it _is_ enough to dampen it all. The pain mitigated with every inhale and the swarming, buzzing flies in his skull scattered for now.

_“Danke,”_ he whispers the second the muzzle is gone and it's like a damn breaking because the others fill the broken quiet with their own tumbling cascade of interjections. 

Shakäste tries to quickly quiet them down, raising his hands placatingly and visibly perturbed by the shouting. The Grand Duchess zips towards the staircase for a moment and phantom nails creep down his spine as he tries to imagine what Lorenzo would do if he found all of them like this. 

“You came for us,” Fjord whispers after the others finally quiet down. He sounds surprised, like he hadn't expected them to.

Like he had hoped for it, prayed for it even, but knew he would probably never see them again. 

Caleb realizes that Fjord probably didn't see them gallivant their way down the steps and go toe to toe with Lorenzo and his lackeys. That his first realization his friends had come for him was when he saw them chained up beside him. 

“Of course they did,” Shakäste affirms, crossing his arms. 

Caleb shrinks away from the assuredness in the cleric’s tone. 

Shakäste doesn't know about the thing that slouches in his thoughts. Crouching, hooked teeth bared, seeking and hungry as it whispers and howls and sinks its claws into the ash and cinders that fester there. The cleric doesn't know that he almost abandoned them to a fate far worse than death because of that _thing_ and it's hunger for revenge. It's slobbering, unsatiated desire for a second chance. 

“I have to admit I had my doubts,” Fjord says, face downturned from where he's propped himself up on his knees, “but you're here now.” 

A laugh answers the half-orc. It's wry, bitter and wet and Caleb can almost feel it echoing from his own chest. 

“And look what good that's done,” Nott snarls from the ground. He can see the angry streaks of moisture on her cheeks, cracked lips trembling and long ears pressed tight against her skull. 

“Nott, stop,” he breathes out even though part of him is struggling alongside her in that acrid swamping regret. 

He can tell she's lashing out, defensive and shaking-- and scared for him, for herself, for all of them. And he is too. He can feel that burbling, angry frustration simmering, tempting him to feed it and let it boil over, but that doesn't mean they should start going at each other's throats either. They are all in the same boat on this one and lighting a fire in it would do no one any good. 

Nott takes a long moment to collect herself, and he can hear her hands flexing in her cuffs. Curling them into nervous hooked claws, eyes darting everywhere except their faces. 

“I just- I don't-" He watches her grapple for the words, a concise way to explain all the things rattling around in her head and grinding along the gears. “We were supposed to come in all _cool_ \-- you know, kick Lorenzo’s ass and- and, I don't-- I don't know, leave here the heroes or something for once. Change your whole perspective on us and be the Mighty Nein again, but now…” she trails off from her edging hysteria, and he can see her gnawing at her lip, unsure. “Now, Molly's _dead_ , Lorenzo has the Dodeca-thingy, and we're probably gonna get tortured to death down here.” 

She bites it out quickly, snappily, all of it tumbling out in a frantic rush, the words hanging in the air. 

A pregnant pause follows them. 

“Molly's _dead_?” 

Jester’s voice is quiet, devastated, like she doesn't quite want to believe it, like if she says it too loud it would make it even more real. There's tears brimming there, they glisten even in the dark and they burn against his skin like acid.

“Is that what we heard when the- that was-?” She chokes off into silence, wide eyed, looking to him and Nott, eyes pleading, praying that he'll deny it, tell her she misheard.

He looks away.

“Ja... He, uhm...Lorenzo-” He can practically see paling purple draped in liquid crimson behind his eyelids as he speaks, “Lorenzo got him."

“Fuck,” Fjord grits out, eyes clenched shut, turning his head away from them, teeth grit in a frustrated snarl.

The news a seemingly grievous blow to whatever stalwart demeanor he had been trying to shore up and hide behind. 

Shakäste is silent. His arms crossed tightly over his chest, a quiet, empathetic pain wrinkled along the corner of his eyes, and he can hear Keg shuffling in the dark at the mention of Molly. 

A memorialized hush descends, and even with the threat of Lorenzo and the slavers looming over them, they each take their own brief, solemn moments of silence. 

Jester is the one to finally break it, vacated of the wanton mirth she usually exudes, “Thank you, Nott. For coming for us...even if it didn't work out.”The blue tiefling smiles and it's as shaky and unsure as one of Jester’s smiles can possibly be, but Caleb can see in the way Nott’s trembling marginally lessens that it does it's job.

“Thank you, both of you. Really." Fjord clears his throat, Caleb can see a similar shimmer in his eyes as Jester, but the half orc is restraining it, shoving it behind a mounting steel-jawed fury as he glares at the ground. 

He knows Fjord is avoiding looking at him and the others. Caleb wonders if he's ashamed of the doubts he had before, now that they're all trapped here together and all.

He shouldn't be. 

Fjord hadn't been wrong to doubt him. 

He had been two steps from taking off that night. Prepared to leave the three of them to a terribly unknown fate in order to rectify his own.

So, he just nods, saying nothing as he inspects the stone work below. The guilt curled up in his gut is heavy and he's afraid if they look hard enough they can see it brimming past the cracked parts of him. 

“And what about her, who's she?” Fjord nods his head towards Keg who watches them all with tight and frightened eyes.

“She is…” , he begins and he contemplates telling them _everything_. 

Telling them that she helped lead them into their misguided revenge plot, saddled them with her unknowingly terrible intel and watched them charge headfirst into a battle they couldn't predict. That she had run from the fight, abandoned them to their fateful battle, but --- _but_ stuck out her neck for them in the end, forfeited her life in exchange for theirs as Molly's bled into the earth. 

“She helped us find you,” he settles on. 

It's not his story to tell and more pressing things come to mind. 

Such as their friend's new found freedom. 

“Can you?” Caleb twists his wrists, the cuff jangling as he looks pointedly at the freed cleric. He would rahter be out of this position with the way his chest is starting to ache, breath growing more laboured each minute.

Shakäste frowns, holding out the broken makeshift lock pick. “Unfortunately, I used up the ones the Grand Duchess managed to find on my own set and I don't know how long it'll take to find us more." He sounds solemn, resigned. Like he knows how this has to go, but doesn't want it to be true just yet.

“You can't just-?” Fjord mimes busting out of the cuffs with a hitch of his shoulders. 

Shakäste shakes his head, “Sadly, there's nothing in my arsenal that can get those cuffs open. Especially, if magic runs through them.” 

And Caleb can almost see that uncomfortable weight across Shakäste’s shoulders as the man is forced to bear the burden of freedom without them.

“ _Was_? Magic?” 

“Yeah… they, uh, they used to do something with them and we'd find ourselves suddenly waking up hours later, none the wiser,” Fjord explains. 

“I think the half-elf woman was the one to usually do it. She'd like, wave her hand and say some stuff and then it'd just be darkness for awhile,” Jester adds, wiggling her fingers where they're trapped behind her.

“He likes to be able to easily control the cargo,” Keg pipes up from her corner, tremulous, but sure. “They're enchanted with something. I don't know with what or how though. I'm not-,” she worries her bottom lip between her teeth, “I'm not good with all this magic bullshit, but from what I've seen it makes whoever's wearing them go to sleep for awhile if you say the right stuff.”

“Well,” Jester begins, head tilting, “why didn't they put us to sleep this time?” 

“Maybe Lorenzo and his goons can't activate it?” Fjord speculates.

“No,” Keg shakes her head, gaze distant, “He wants us awake for a reason.”

Caleb has a feeling Lorenzo does most the things he does for a reason. He may be arrogant and a massive arschloch, but he talks and moves in a way that is dangerously calculated. 

_Carefully predatory._

“That doesn't matter right now,” he says, the phantom sensation of a hand gripping his jaw making him want to avoid this topic entirely. “What does matter, is what we do now.” 

“Can Duchess Stacy collect more picks?” Jester asks.

Shakäste shakes his head again, “I won't be able to collect enough pieces to ensure that I can break all of you out at once. I could maybe get enough for one of you, but who knows when they'll come back down those stairs. And with the enchantment on those cuffs I can't shatter them.”

And Caleb can see, the wake of the revelation tumbling somewhere in the inky black despair, that captivity has taken its toll on the aged cleric. His muscles tremble with a bone deep exhaustion and his cheeks have grown impossibly more concave than they had already been the first time they encountered him. Fjord and Jester haven't come out unscathed either, there's an alarming ring of blood bruised exhaustion circling their eyes, their faces a tad gaunter, a hair sharper than he last remembers them being. 

“So,” Caleb starts, looking towards where he knows the haversack hangs in the dark, "we have a choice to make then.” 

“Have Shakäste risk getting us all out of here or have him get away with what he can..." Fjord finishes for him, eyes downcast. 

“I really am sorry, you all,” Shakäste looks to each of them, pupils misted over and unfocused, but wrought with a naked sincerity. “I wish this had all gone very differently… that I could have gotten you all out of here right now.” 

It seems like the cleric would rather still be chained up with them than be forced to make this decision. 

“It’s fi-,” Fjord bites back the plaintive and Caleb is grateful because they all know it really isn't, nor will it be fine. “We'll do what we can with the opportunity you've given us at least.” 

Caleb isn't sure what opportunity Fjord means other than the one where they spend the hours waiting for Lorenzo and his goons to return, discussing the ways they are going to be tortured within an inch of their lives. It is a novel thought, if not a placating one for the cleric who won't have to live with the consequences of what's about to happen. 

Caleb continues staring at where he knows that pink bag hangs, the tang of blood sharp on his tongue as he probes at the newly empty spot of gum in his mouth. 

“Firstly and _most_ importantly, that Beacon _cannot_ fall into Lorenzo’s hands.” Caleb affirms, looking at all of them. 

And maybe it's mostly selfish and an increment of selflessness. He wants the thing to look at and study for himself. He doesn't know what it's capable of yet and he has a feeling it's something far grander than he can fathom. Something Lorenzo should never have access to--- and he can only fear what someone like Lorenzo would use it for. 

“Agreed.” Fjord nods, Jester nodding along as well, as Nott continues to quietly look out past the bars. 

“Okay, okay, okay. So, we get Shakäste to take the haversack, then what? How is he even going to get out of he--”

“Is Yasha okay?” Nott interjects, cutting Jester off, blurting it out like it's been eating at her for some time now as they've all deliberated over their predicament.

And it's like a biting slap to the cheek as Jester and Fjord immediately go quiet, neither answersing. It's all too telling of what the barbarian has endured under the slaver's care. 

But, Caleb just can't fathom the often awkwardly spoken woman under the knife.

He can see her gently pressing flowers into the unused pages of a worn journal, her almost child-like delight at the orange cat he would snap into existence onto her shoulders, the skeletal wings fanning out and haloing her in a shroud of devouring shadows. Even the way she would often leave, but seamlessly meld back into their motley crew like she had never left to begin with, all quiet smiles and a consuming, thunderous rage. 

But sliced and slashed, burned beneath Lorenzo’s hands is not something he can see ever happening to her. 

It's not something he ever wants to. 

Shakäste nods, lacking his usual sure smile, “I sent the Grand Duchess to the next cell to see who all was there earlier and she's-- well, she's alive, along with the other two, but I'm not gonna lie…”he trails off for a moment, his familiar’s feathers laying flat, “She's pretty banged up.” 

A hush seeps in and lays thick over them. It's oppressive-- palpable, as it lords overhead. 

“They didn't touch us really, not 'til you all rolled in at least,” Fjord adds after a moment. "They mostly kept us knocked out or awake to listen to them torturing her. ...and the big guy...he knew it would get under our skin, counted on it even.” 

Caleb shivers at the implications. Recalling how it felt to listen to them all get branded and then finally endure the same fate. Like a sheep awaiting the slaughter, hearing the knife drag across their throats with a gurgle and having no option but to await the same. Always wondering when it's finally your turn, but never knowing until the steel's against your neck. And even if he knows torture, he does not wish the implements used upon any of them, as unknowing of their eventual fate as some of them might be.

“He likes to choose some of the pack to focus his efforts on. ‘Break one and you start to break them all’, or at least that's how the others explained it to me.” Keg elaborates, and Caleb can see Fjord’s eyes narrow suspiciously even in the dark, the half orc calculating, drawing his own conclusions on how she would know such things. 

“Wait, so then... is that why he separated Beau from us too? Cause he's going to torture her _more_?” The tiefling is edging into hysterics, he can hear her straining against the chains, tail lashing across the stones.

He realizes that she never saw or met their other help and that Caduceus is most likely in the other cell as well. There's a guilt there, for dragging the firbolg into a situation he had far too hastily agreed to be involved with. 

“Maybe? I don't honestly know for sure. Sorry…" Keg admits, ducking her head. 

“Then… why did he--?” Nott trails off as she looks up at him, chained to the wall and dangling. 

He looks away, all too aware of his own misgivings and why he's here. A selfish part of him glad they hadn't connected the dots with what Lida had said before. Keg thankfully just shakes her head, shoulders shrugging with the rough clatter of chains. She obviously doesn't have all the answers and Caleb _barely_ trusts the answers she does have for them. 

Shakäste heads for the door in the wake of their foreboding revelations. Caleb knows it's now into the thick of the witching hours even without the moon to clue him in. 

It's now or never for the freed cleric. 

The Grand Duchess darts back out between the bars and up the stairs before swiftly returning with a sharp hum. 

“Caleb, don't you have something that could get us out of here?” Nott asks with a hopefulness and surety that he _has_ to have something up his sleeve. 

“Nein..." He breathes heavily, pulling his weight up again so he can at least get one more full breath of air in. And he watches her budding hope crumble at the word. “Without... my hands free and without my components there isn't much I can do...”

She turns her attention to the other casters in the cell. He can see a jittery panic beginning to creep in where her ears press back and her lips curls.

“Fjord? Jester?” 

“Nope...I've tried, but... nothing.” Fjord says and Caleb can almost see the half-orc flexing his hand as if the falchion will curl into existence, but there is no answering flash of blue-green or splash of seawater here. 

Jester says nothing for a moment, her brow furrowed and face pinched like she's focusing on something, but can't quite grasp it, “I can't reach him...They took his symbol and he- he won't answer me.” 

“Wait, did they take Shakäste’s too then?” Nott asks, steering away from that thread that even she can see tangling tightly around the tiefling’s heart. 

“They'd have to find it first,” Shakäste says, the characteristic tilt to his lips returned, but it's sharper than before, sadder as the Grand Duchess hovers in front of the lock. 

The cleric starts to weave an incantation, muttering and moving his hands in an intricate pattern before there's a crack and he can hear the locking mechanism shatter with whatever Shakäste has laid into it. 

The door shrieks on its hinges as it swings open. Caleb winces as the sound echoes in the absolute silence. 

There's an ominous pause as they all listen for footsteps on the stairs. 

But there's nothing. 

Their cage is open, their sentries absent, yet they are far from freedom, the manacles heavy around their wrists like clipped wings. 

Shakäste quickly makes his way out and towards the haversack, moving with an unnatural ease in the dark, the Duchess perched on his shoulder. He grabs it, heading back towards them, reaching within the garish bag.

Dread mingles with relief when the cleric draws forth the lead lined box.

Truthfully, they have known Shakäste for almost no time at all and now… Now they were entrusting whatever power this thing held to him. And Caleb suspects the cleric is a good man, at the least a far greater one than himself, but that doesn’t mean darker intentions don't lurk beneath those warm smiles and well-lived laugh lines. 

Appearances can always be so unassuming after all. 

They really don't have a choice though.They need to get the Dodecahedron out of here at all costs. _He_ needs it out of here. Far from Lorenzo’s reach and away from this desecrated place. 

And Shakäste is also their only hope of escape should he make it out. He can bring word to Nila that they have been captured, make sure the family of firbolgs made it out safely, and gather some help from those who might wish to see the Iron Shepherds in the ground and help put them there.

At least with someone who knows them on the outside they had a person other than the Gentleman looking for them. Caleb doesn't want to ruminate on what will happen once their time limit trickles to zero and the man wonders if they've deserted and betrayed him. 

By that point they might already be too far gone for it to matter. 

The cleric could also abscond from here and leave them to rot. Caleb isn't a gambling man but he feels like the odds aren't in their favor. The man owes them nothing. If he never returned for them Caleb wouldn't blame him. 

Shakäste returns the Dodecahedron to the dimensional space with a resigned sigh. 

“I will return for you all. If not here then wherever you may end up. I _will_ find you and I _will_ free you. That's a promise.”

The promise feels sincere despite his doubts.

He hopes it is. 

Caleb stops him as he moves to exit, remembering that the cleric never got to meet their temporary druid companion and worried about if they made it out unscathed.

“If you go into the woods there is a graveyard. A firbolg named Nila might still be there with her family and you can probably find a place to rest there and some food before you journey further.”

Shakäste nods, like he's taken the suggestion into heavy consideration. Caleb has a feeling any safe place to rest with a warm meal would appeal to a man deprived of both for who knows how long. 

“And thank you for everything, now and before.” Fjord interjects quickly as Shakäste steps past the bars. 

The cleric turns, smiling sadly, looking pointedly at the half orc with faded eyes. 

“You can thank me once I get you all out of here.” 

There is a determination in the older man’s step despite the tremble of exhaustion in his limbs and Caleb hopes that he will make it out of here. 

For all of their sakes. 

The shock of white hair finally leaves their immediate line of sight, a dark feathered hummingbird lingering in the dark.

“Goodbye, Duchess Stacy...” The hummingbird flits over to the solemn tiefling, perching on her horn for a moment before taking off after Shakäste. 

It feels like an apology. 

 

A reluctantly freed bird leaving behind its caged companions as it flies free. 

 

 

\----------- 

 

 

An hour passes. 

 

Time grinds by with all the subtlety of pumice stone cogs and they watch and wait with bated breath for that pendulum to fall as it swings and swings, down and down.

None of them are willing to fall into sleep in spite of their exhaustion. Ears attuned to the sound of footsteps, for shouting, for anything other than the awful anxious hush between them.

Caleb startles when Jester pipes up from the dark. Her question morphing into the pound of footfalls for the thinnest, terrifying second. 

“How-” She pauses, hands twisting in the cuffs, “How did it happen?” 

He screws his eyes shut, chest aching with more than just the strain bleeding down from his shoulders to snake around his torso and squeeze. Takes a deep breath, wrists straining again as he pulls himself up with the chains so he can gather enough breath to at least explain this. 

“What we planned worked at first... I managed to slow most of them just as Keg stopped the lead cart, but it-- it, ah... it wasn't enough. I did not get all of them and things- it turned bad quickly... We killed one of theirs, but Mollymauk, he-” 

_The tiefling; red trailing from the tattoos that mar his skin in swirling intricate tapestries, frost creeping along the painted pictures in ominous fractals as he faces down the brute. A snarl on his lips, blades brandished, and coat fanned out behind him in an embroidered prism as he leaps to the defense of the fools he had foolishly befriended._

_A spray of red across the dirt, bloodied flowers sprouting from a dead man’s earth as he falls and fails to rise, steel embedded in his sternum.  
_

Caleb breathes harshly, panting, taking another moment to gather his breath, arms shaking under the strain and ribs jerking. And he sincerely hopes they will not leave him strung up like this, not when he knows that familiar crawl of sickness as fluid begins its creep into the pits of his lungs.

“Lorenzo ran him through with his glaive. No hesitation...” There's more just at the tip of his tongue, but it's held back by the same damning glimmer slicing down the blue tiefling’s cheeks as before. 

He wants to tell her that Mollymauk Tealeaf died; eyes ever open. A blank crimson staring endlessly up into the pale grey of an encroaching snowfall, dying as he lived; hard, fast and with little to no hesitation or regard for the consequences to himself. Far more concerned with the way those around him faceted into the bigger picture alongside him and not how he might disrupt it. A selfishly selfless person that he didn't see eye to eye with often, but still offered him consolence and comfort at no cost nonetheless like it came as naturally to him as breathing, or laughing, or smiling. Things that he had forgotten the luxury of, buried in ash and soot at the far smoldering corners of himself.

And Lorenzo had cut that sharp burst of life down like it was worth _nothing_

He had to have seen the tiefling begin to fall, known the battle was already won in his own favor, but he still ran him through. Ensuring that it was snuffed out completely and totally. All the mercy of a man stomping wayward sparks beneath his heel with the way he pulled the glaive free from the dead tiefling’s chest. 

And the slaver had the audacity to call them even for it, as if the life of the druid they killed could ever equivalate them. Leaving them behind with a warning that would never sway their next decision as they lowered Molly into the dirt, pinning a note to his chest in case miracles happened to come in pairs. 

“We buried him along the road. Left a note on him… just in case.” 

“Do you think he'll, you know,--” Fjord interjects, clearing his throat nervously, like he's searching for the right way to say it, “come back this time?” 

“I...I do not know,” And he doesn't know if he wants him to now that they're here. 

Mollymauk would forever wander the Empire looking for the Mighty Nein that gave him his name, but vanished into thin air.

And, even if the tiefling remembered them, what then?

They were dead here either way. 

“He did it once before, right? Then, I'm sure he can do it again.” There's a hope there that wasn't before.

It's a spark in a dying flame and Caleb can't tell if Jester actually believes it or not. 

He can tell she wants to though. 

“If he comes back _I_ get to keep all of his gold for putting us through that.” Nott huffs, but he can tell she's not serious, that there's no weight behind her words.

She was the only one who didn't take something from the tiefling after all. 

Jester chokes out a laugh. It's watery and laced with grief, but its the brightest thing he's heard since being shoved into chains and he latches onto it. Holding that small, little spark close as they continue to wait for that swinging pendulum to crash down on them. 

And he can hear it there, getting closer. 

It sounds like the crackling of an inferno and the gasp of a man's dying breath. 

 ------ 

 

Another hour passes in relative silence, the occasional whispered chatter filling the space.

But Caleb does not join them. He is waiting and listening for those footfalls that will surely come with each encroaching lurch of sunrise. 

“When do you think they'll be down here?”

Of course it's Jester that finally asks the one thing that's been eating at all of them, slowly gnawing at their nerves and flaying them bare with each passing second.

“The sun rises in about an hour....” He manages, even that sentence nearly winding him.

“So…" Fjord retorts, “soon then?” 

“ _Ja_... probably...” 

“Wh-what do you think they'll do to us?” Nott pipes up from the dark, voice shaking. 

He doesn't answer, just hangs in the chains and tries to keep what breathe he still has. 

“He wouldn't-” the goblin swallows loudly, “He wouldn't kill us...right?” 

The quiet is the only thing that answers her.

 

\-------

 

Time passes like an idle trickle of darkened water, until suddenly, without warning, it runs barren and dry.

 

Their fates are sealed with each heavy, echoing thud on the steps and the pendulum they've all been waiting for finally falls as a painful thundering comes to life in Caleb's chest. Like a panicked bird caught behind his sternum he can feel his heart beating, desperate and bloodied against the bars of bone and flesh. 

The steadily growing light at the far side of the chamber has him scrambling for the spells trapped alongside his fettered wrists. Fire is the easiest one, it's right there, smoldering just beneath his skin, if he can just wrench his hand free and---

Beads of crimson answer his struggles against the steel jaws and no matter how he hard he strains against them, they only bite and tear harder, his shoulders straining dangerously with his efforts, the ache ripping down his ribs. 

The chains won't give, his spells won't help him and he has a feeling the others have come to the same realization as they all exchange increasingly more panicked looks. Too afraid to talk any longer, their tongues tied by an inevitable discovery they'd like to postpone for as long as possible. 

The footfalls are thunderous. 

It's the tolling sound of the descending harbinger of their personal apocalypse as the bearer of that hellish orange glow slouches closer. Until, finally, the hungry prowling light of a torch sends the shadows scattering up the walls. 

A familiar figure pauses just within the main chamber, silhouetted by a crimson steeped omen as the furnaces burn low and anticipatory to either side of him. 

“Well,” the slaver drawls, looking towards where the haversack has vanished and then to the boughs of darkness that enfold them. “ain't this mighty interestin’?”

Caleb can't see his eyes from here. 

Can't read his face or get a tell of what the slaver is thinking as he stares down their untamed pocket of darkness. The torchlight in his hand casting harsh contours across his face that bleed into a skull. 

Lorenzo whistles. 

It's a sharp, shrill sound that drags across his scalp like roughened nails. He winces, trying to shake it out of where it rattles about in his skull, but the answering pound of boots only joins it in its parade. To him its the sound of a frenzied funeral march. Like he's being led to the guillotine by an eager, roaring crowd, bloodlust clenched between their teeth and bleeding from their stomping feet.

The slaver stalks forward, teeth bared in a lip lifting snarl, leaving the torch in it's previous sconce where it mingles with the slowly building glow of the furnaces to plunge the chamber into a hellscape once more. 

“Oh, let me tell you,” Lorenzo bites out, and he can see that carefully restrained anger in the way the brutish slaver’s form tremors, his hands curling around the bars and pulling the broken door wide. “You'll regret that _real_ soon.” 

Figures swarm down the stairs. Far more than they killed before. It's hard to tell how many when they swarm like flies in the dark and close in, a blight amongst the wavering light. 

He can feel his heart, the way its crawled up his throat, slick with the choking black taste of fear as Lorenzo just stands aside and watches his underlings descend with a tight grin. 

Caleb watches as Jester and Fjord, even in the state they are in, futilely try to shield one another. The tiefling even managing to snarl out in infernal as a fist tightens around her arm. It's guttural, hair-raising even, and Caleb expects the man grabbing at her to flinch back, wounded by her hellish rebuke, but there's nothing, and he catches a glimpse of crippling disappointment before she's dragged away and smothered by the dark cloaked thugs. Fjord quickly following suit with his own cursing and struggling. 

Nott hisses and spits, writhing in her chains as they encroach. Poison-yellow eyes frenetic as they roll about, glancing up to him, to the thugs, to a silent Lorenzo, and to everything happening around her. She snaps her jaws shut with a click, a hair's breadth from a wandering hand, her head snapping to the side with the answering backhand that follows. A boot buries into the resisting goblin’s side and Caleb unfurls his fingers, willing a firebolt to life that he knows will never come as they drag Nott out after the others. 

And then, all too suddenly, Lorenzo is there, looming over the dwarf in the corner. Keg shakes her head, pressing herself back into the wall, staring up and through the slaver into something else Caleb can't see. Her pupils are glazed, her chest heaving, like there's something trapped beneath the ribs and for all the bravery the dwarf may have found before, it is sapped from her in an instant as she descends into incoherent babbling. 

The slaver dismissively lifts her by the connecting length of chain, idly watches as she squirms and whines, her shoulders popping dangerously in their sockets as she's hoisted aloft. Lorenzo leers at her, eyes flicking along the still surly, but far less bulky dwarf’s frame now that she's bereft of her plate armor. He tosses her from the cell after a yawning moment that has the hairs along Caleb’s neck prickling with unease. The heavy thud of meat and bones mingling with the rattling of her chains has him shrinking against the stone wall he's stuck to. 

Jagged flint shines from the slaver’s harsh contours as he turns to pin him down beneath a heavy, accusatory glare. The dripping shadows on the walls seem to shift and slither about, and it feels like hands creeping up and around his throat, tightening in an invisible snare. And like the rabbits he's seen frothing and bucking at their cinched wires, he can't bear to look away, even as the hunter closes in. 

Caleb rapidly mutters the evocation spells he knows, locked on the approaching slaver the whole time. Tries with everything he has to move his hands in just the right way to invoke the fire he knows burns there. He does it again when nothing answers, twisting them frantically against the cuffs, the incantation pouring forth once more, faster-- frenetic. 

And again. 

And again. 

And _again._

But the only fire he invokes burns at the corner of his eyes, spurred to life by the hot, angry coals stuffed in his chest as he listens to the repeated thuds and intermittent shouts of the other’s being subdued out of sight and out of reach. Lorenzo just smirks, crowns peeking through his cracked lips, shining a warning capped in insidious gold. He looms close, far too close, reaching up to undo the fetters suspending him and ignoring the way he has to invade every aspect of Caleb's space to do so. 

He stops breathing. 

Caleb can see splatters of blood, both dried and fresh, that dot the slaver’s leather armor in haunting constellations, the faded patch work tattoos that snake across the oddly leathery skin, and the sharpened, snarled snags of teeth lined in aging ichor. The smell of rot and decay and a terrible unnatural cold consumes him the longer the slaver lingers there and he can feel himself trembling. His heart reclaims it's lodging in his throat, threatening to beat it's way out from where he's trapped it while something sickly and poisonous seeps into his veins and stills him. Hindbrain afraid of giving away a presence already known as cold-touched skin brushes his own. His lungs burn, vision tunneling until he thinks he might step into the dark when finally there's a sharp click and he's falling. 

He has hardly a second to relish in the overwhelming relief before all of his weight crashes down onto his left shoulder with a loud, sliding pop. 

The socket _ignites_. 

A keening whine leaves him and he scrambles his still manacled ankles along the grime caked wall and floor. Blunt, cracked nails tear at the cuff still suspending him, mindless and primal in his need to relieve the pressure burning along the nerves. He thinks he can hear something tearing and rending-- _grinding_ \-- and it's all _wrong_. Wrong in the way glass slipped beneath skin is as it shifts and slides where it shouldn't be. 

And he can feel those eyes on him, the way they're picking him apart, dissecting him down to the bones and below. Lorenzo's still too close-- far too close, and each passing second churns into renewed agony as Caleb hangs there, his thoughts losing shape and reason. Slopping and sliding into a wet miasma of incomprehensible pleading until he starts to think maybe he'll do anything to make it stop. 

Then, there's a second click, the world tilting as the floor mercifully meets him with stone against his cheek.

He gasps out a relieved, watery laugh; wires crossing and misfiring as he pulls himself to his knees, reaching for the limp arm with a trembling hand. Curling forward, hunching as the limb pulls and the muscles scream beneath the skin. Thoughts of spells and escape lost to the white noise engulfing him as he manually tries to force the arm back into working order. But the angles all wrong and he can't get the leverage right. It aches with such a consistent bone deep pulse that he thinks it might just be easier to lose the limb entirely.

Someone grabs his functioning arm, wrenches him around, and a foot plants into his chest, forces him onto his back. His heels scrabble uselessly at the stone as he grits his teeth up at Lorenzo looming above him, the dislocated limb smoldering it's protest as chilled fingers seize it and Caleb freezes at the touch. It's strange, seeing the slaver kneeled next to him, oddly disinterested in the whole process. Maneuvering the deadened limb, stare methodical, bored even-- like this is merely routine for him. There's a sharp movement and then a second pop, the limb reuniting with a sickening grind of bone and ligament that has him seeing white-- and then nothing. 

His head lolls, eyes rolling, and he blinks dots out of his vision. He thinks he might have blacked out for a moment, but it's hard to tell. All he knows is that his stiffened, but mercifully relocated arm is back in shackles and he's fettered like he was the first time.

But he's no longer in the cell.

He's kneeling just outside it. Facing the familiar table they've all been intimately acquainted with. There's a particular barbarian strapped to it now and he sucks in a sharp breath at the sight of her. Lorenzo is just beyond it, taking a torture implement in hand and turning from where he had been conversing with one of his thugs.

The slaver turns to face them and his eyes rove over something to Caleb’s immediate left, before settling fully on him, a satisfied smile curling his lips. 

“Now that we're all finally present--" Lorenzo rests the flat iron bar against his shoulder as he approaches the edge of the table and a struggling Yasha. “Shall we get started?”


	4. Consequences

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where I would say tread lightly and cautisouly if you've read this far.

_“Shall we get started?”_

His entire body is one giant bruise, the aches and pains painted purple across his skin. His thighs tremor as they're forced to bear his weight, hands locked uncomfortably behind him, the relocated shoulder stiff and hot with a muscle deep throb. Strands of hair slicked down to his forehead and he's halfway to panting as he tries to release a sickly heat trapped in his lungs. It's cold, far colder than he remembers it being and he shivers, half-dazed eyes staring up at the brutish slaver that looms over Yasha and idly inspects him from behind the table. 

The slaver looks him up and down, unnervingly sharp canines and false gold teeth on display.“Glad you could finally join us.”

Caleb's gaze drifts down to Yasha, escaping amongst the ruin there.

She is in absolute _tatters._

Her clothes have been ripped, slashed, and burned so thoroughly that they barely cling to her by threads. Dried stripes of blood mar each limb, crisscrossing up her torso and chest with almost surgical precision, carefully placed and eerily uniform in size. He shudders at the glistening, blackened curl of charred flesh along the soles of her feet and across her palms, the bite of molten iron far too fresh against his own. Her hair has not been spared either. It's shorn short, the once messy tangle of braids and half toned locks cut to her chin and nearly down to her scalp in sloppy misshapen patches. Bruises litter her, far more than he had seen on the others, shaped into fists and fingers and blossoming angry violets against her too pale skin. 

The stark purple collar wrapped around her throat sends something seething and ugly turning in his gut. Yet, even covered in the wounds of captivity and with the threat of more to come just on the horizon she still bares her teeth up at the slaver and claws at the wood beneath her.

There's a fury in her eyes that crackles like lightning.

Lorenzo brushes a few of the sloppily sheered strands from her forehead where they've stuck fast to the brimming sweat there. Ignoring the way she snaps at his hand, her teeth clicking shut in the quiet, he smirks down at her, musing a chopped braid between two fingers, unraveling it even further. The look in the slaver’s eyes is unreadable, but it feels dangerous. Dangerous in the way walking among shadows might feel, the things slithering about you wholly unknown, but hungry and eager all the same. 

“If one of you tells me how the blind man got out _and_ what was in that haversack he took, I'll let you all go another day without being touched,” he begins, still fiddling with the lock of hair, watching the barbarian fume and snarl. “And if none of you talk, well, let's just say I won't be so generous.” 

Lorenzo finally drops it, sweeping his gaze down the line of them, gold flashing behind his lips as he rounds the table, footfalls as heavy and thundering as ever. 

"Now--" The slaver smacks the flat, iron bar against his the heel of his palm as he stops before them. “--there's a few simple rules before we get started.” He slowly stalks down the line, fingers running idly along the edges of the implement who's purpose Caleb has no name or comprehension of yet. “You try casting while your gag is removed and-” Lorenzo curls his finger across an invisible crossbow’s trigger, staring straight at him. _”Click.”_

“You pray to whatever deity you follow--" Those eyes thankfully jump to someone else and he curls his finger again. _“Click.”_

“You do _anything_ other than tell me what I want to know and--" He does it one last time, gaze sweeping down the line as he clicks his tongue. 

Caleb can feel the crossbow bolt in question leveled between his shoulders. Whoever is holding it is trembling and he has a feeling it's not fear that grips them. It tastes more like anticipation as the contraption rests against his sweat-soaked shirt and threatens to tear through him with even the slightest hint of pressure. 

Lorenzo hands the iron off to a human bathed in tattoos and with teeth like an abandoned cemetery who eagerly scuttles off towards the furnaces.

“Now that you all know how to play the game..." Lorenzo crosses his arms, settling back aginst the table and eyeing them. "Would anyone like to tell me what I want to know before we get started?” 

Caleb can feel it, trapped behind his teeth and slithering across his tongue. His way out is set before him and all he has to do is reach out and _take it_. Shakäste is obviously long gone from here and Lorenzo doesn't know what was in the now vanished haversack, so how could he tell if he lied? And gods, is it tempting to unhinge his jaw and let all of it come spilling out in a heaping slop. 

But he stays his tongue, swallows back that thickened muck as the handle of a freshly heated iron is pressed into Lorenzo’s outstretched hand. 

“No takers?” The slaver tsks, looking down at the barbarian doubly secured to the table, “How about you? Anything?” 

Yasha just spits up at him, her teeth still bared, dried blood caught in the grooves of her skin, smeared around her lips and collaring her wrists and ankles in red strokes of fingers and palms. 

“I figured as much.” 

Yasha doesn't even utter a sound as the heated flat iron is pressed to her clavicle. The grind and strain of her clenched teeth and the sizzle of cooking meat mingles with the whining restraints as she heaves against them.

Caleb's own hand throbs, the shiny warped flesh swollen with the beginnings of puss; white and yellow and noxious. He recalls the numbing, devouring press of fire and he doesn't know how she can hold herself together so effortlessly still. As if there isn't a bar of molten iron held to her skin, warping and eating away everything it touches.Unflinching, like she's experienced far worse.He realizes that for all he knows about Yasha, he truly knows nothing. 

Lorenzo pulls off the iron after a dragging second, handing it off to a smirking Lida who has stationed herself beside the previous tattooed man. He tucks a sweat slicked curl of hair behind Yasha’s ear, tsking, “You won't even sing now that I've given you an audience?” Lorenzo isn't looking at Yasha when he says it, flecks of obsidian locked onto someone to Caleb’s right. “It would be such a waste to throw away this opportunity, don't you think?” 

Caleb turns his head just enough to see who it is, cautious of the trigger happy thug behind him. 

Beau is there; bruised and bloody. Her left eye almost swollen shut, lips busted and split around grit teeth as she glares up at the smirking slaver. There's a promise in the way her whole form leans towards Lorenzo, that she'd rip his spine out with her bare hands if she was free. 

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Beau barks, face red, brow furled, and nose wrinkled into a dog toothed snarl, “We don't know anything you fucking asshole! You knocked us the fuck out!”

Caleb tenses, the rules they had been given moments ago clear and stark in his head. 

The crossbowman behind her presses the point to the back of her skull, a reminder not to speak out of turn and she only growls back at him. Lorenzo waves him off with a chuckle, full-bellied and unrestrained, letting her outburst stand outside his previous terms, seemingly more amused than annoyed like he had anticipated this, hoped for it even. 

“Oh, trust me, I know you don't." Lorenzo's eyes flick to Caleb and then the others in turn. “But your friends _do_. So, you can thank _them_ for what's happening here.” 

“But we don't know anything! We just woke up like this and Shakäste was gone!” Jester pleas, tremors wracking her, paled in the warm light. 

“She's telling the truth. We don't know-” 

A cracking crunch interrupts Fjord’s bluff and Yasha lets out a strangled, reluctant cry. He can hear her choking on it, like it's physically painful to let even that small yelp claw its way out. And he can see where Lorenzo has bent back one of her fingers, the skin already turning a furious red at the knuckle. 

“If none of you have anything helpful to offer up I'd advise you stop talking,” Lorenzo passes the iron off once more and it swiftly returns, freshly heated and glowing. 

The next few minutes are filled with the repeated hiss of burning flesh and Yasha’s waning attempts to suppress the sounds trapped in her heaving chest. Beau only grows more agitated beside him with each press of the metal to Yasha’s shoulders, arms, thighs, chest. Stripes of shiny angry flesh beginn to wrap themselves around the barbarian in a nauseous snaking tapestry that makes his stomach roil. 

There's a fury emanating from the monk beside him as it seems to continue on endlessly. The ropey muscles in her arms jumping as she flexes against the manacles. She's a chained dog snapping at it's leash, attention locked on it's master's biting hands and a thirst for repentance in her snarling jowls. 

There's something brewing there, something angry and illogical. 

Something that might get her killed. 

Might get them all killed. 

And just as another pass of the iron is laid into Yasha’s skin and he thinks he might open his mouth to finally stop all of this, there is a waxy pop beside him and he turns his head just in time to see Beau slam her elbow back, arm impossibly freed. 

The thug behind her is caught off guard, flailing as he's struck in the side of his thigh and stumbling, leg giving out. His hands fall slack on the weapon, the monk gnabbing it in one swift motion and swinging it up, unloading the notched bolt at a seemingly startled Lorenzo.The thugs finally jump into action, unloading bolts of their own when they realize what's happening and the crossbow clatters to the ground as three sink into her freed arm and two more embed into her torso with a harsh thwuck.

She hisses, falling forward. Freed hand braced against the stone, arm shaking, blood curling down and dripping past the wood shafts. Hair wild, falling free from the blue dipped ribbon, and eyes unflinchingly locked onto Lorenzo, burning with an untamed bloodlust.

Caleb has gone deathly still ever since she slipped her hand from the cuffs, afraid to disturb the ominous hush. The soft plips of blood onto masonry filling his head as he watches the slaver removes the bolt lodged in his armor with grit teeth and something cold in his glare. Snapping it in one hand and dropping it onto the prone barbarian without losing a beat. 

_“Get it back in it’s chains.”_

The vein of sadistic amusement has run dry, his voice as cold and biting as his eyes as he stares down the pin-cushioned monk. 

Thugs wrestle her back into her restraints, leaving the thumb dislocated. Caleb's brow furrows, confused when one of them mutters something and touches the cuffs. Realization strikes him the moment Beauregard falls limp and doesn't rise. 

Yasha stares at where Beau has fallen, her face carefully blank. And he's unsure how much she can see from her angle up on the table, but he thinks it's enough. There's something in them. Like clouds rolling over hills, the sharp tang of ozone bleeding from them as they deepen and rumble with the warnings of an approaching storm. 

“Any more interruptions you lot would like to make?” It's the first time he's heard the slaver truly harried, the casual drawl he hides behind ruffled and harshened with distaste. 

Only silence answers him. 

There's harsh, wet breathing, a quiet sob, the frustrated grinding of teeth and a plethora of other sounds along the line Caleb’s been forced into. Each one born of horror and shock and an anxious hum that's embedded itself into all of them like sharpened bolts. 

Caleb quietly stares at the blood seeping into the stone-work, a building heat at the back of his skull, ribs fluttering uncontrollably.

They aren't moving to heal her.

There's more blood and it just keeps coming and they aren't _doing anything about it,_ and if he has to watch another one die he doesn't know what'll happen-- what he'll do. The trickle of red against tanned skin is too close to crimson against lilac and he wants to look away, but he can't. He doesn't know why he cares-- no, that's not true, maybe he does, but it's impossible to quantify when his vision keeps collapsing around the fallen monk and his head feels like it's stuttering, stuck in a damaging feedback loop as he watches her bleeding out.

And he doesn't know why won't they do anything-- 

He croaks something out, it's thick and garbled against his parched tongue, dissolving into unintelligible ash in the air.

Lorenzo tilts his head, the slaver’s attention eagerly snapping to him, like he had anticipated this. “What was that?” 

He swallows thickly, the heady tang of iron lining his nostrils. 

“S-Stop…” 

The slaver’s eyes narrow and he rounds the table. He stops short in front of Beau, places the toe of his boot against one of the bolts in her forearm and begins to push. There's a disquieting wet sound and while Beau doesn't even flinch in her artificial sleep Caleb does. He can almost feel the bolt ripping his arm to shreds and he can't tear his eyes from it, nearly gagging at the flash of white amongst the red mess. 

“Say it again,” Lorenzo says, looking down his nose at him. 

Caleb doesn't want to. 

Now that all of the slaver’s attention is centered on him he wants to take it all back. He feels like he's drowning under their scrutiny, swallowed up in those yawning black pits. He's drifting on deadly, abyssal waters that threaten to drown him and he shakes his head against it, teeth locked tight, shrinking back into the chains and looking everywhere but the slaver’s eyes.

Lorenzo bends down, tears one of the bolts from the monk’s arm and plunges it back into the junction of her right shoulder, dangerously close to her throat. He hears Jester whimper, Fjord shout obscenities, Nott yell, and Yasha snarl from the table, her thrashing punctuated by the rattling of metal. 

“ _Say. It. Again."_

He's shaking, but he can't speak. 

There's something broiling and building in his chest as he watches the slaver tear the bolt out. It glitters with an arc of crimson that splatters across tanned skin and grey stone and something is tearing it’s way up from his diaphragm. It's frenzied and wild as Lorenzo swings down, the point glistening an insidious red-soaked silver. The flashes of a prismatic, embroidered coat draped over a cobbled cross chase it down and the word caught between his ribs finally leaves him in an uncontrolled burst.

“Stop!” 

His pants harshly, the sound grating in the ensuing silence, eyes locked onto where the bolt has sunk a quarter inch into Beau’s neck. And even though the slaver has stayed his hand, Beau mercifully spared, Caleb still knows he's lost something as Lorenzo smiles, full and toothy, tossing the bolt to the side as he steps over her. And he doesn't really care, teeth grit and eyes narrowed up at the man.

The way the slaver edges towards him sends him hunching into himself, head bowed, remembering quickly where he's landed himself; at the center of attention. But at least it's all on him now, and none of them. Still, he doesn't like the things he can see lurking behind those half-lidded eyes and curled snarl. But a hand grasps his chin, forcing it up, ripping him from hiding, the fresh ichor coating it smearing across his skin and the heady tang of iron that follows is overwhelming, but not entirely foreign. 

“And why should I?” Lorenzo’s eyes flicker over his face, a thumb brushing far too gently along his jaw before the fingers dig in and wrench his face up further. 

He grits his teeth, setting his jaw. 

It's right there.

His reprieve.

All of them could escape torture for another day if he just said what was wanted of him. And he can feel it, slipping out of him, escaping with that poisonous desire to run and bow and fold at the hand of adversity. 

“Because--” 

He flounders short, the nails digging into his jaw a grim reminder of the angry burn in his gums, the status he holds here as nothing more than property. Not even an information key or an important figure who's life would come as a priority. He is entirely disposable here. And the phantom click of metal against his teeth sends the muscles in his cheek twitching and it's hard to think past the thick fog rolling in. 

He opens his mouth, words trying to form at the corner of his lips--

“There was nothing important in that bag."

And it's Caduceus who speaks, voice as lazy and rough as the moment they met him, laced with the thinnest tang of sharpness, “Just some things I like to collect. I gave it to him to carry since my armor was already heavy enough.” 

Lorenzo’s eyes never leave him; not even to look at the firbolg. They are burning into him. Narrowed, angular, alight with an unerring insight, like he can read the lie written across his pupils even as Caleb tries to desperately nod against the hand holding him in place.

The slaver just tsks at his efforts, frowning. 

“You know.” The hand on his jaw shifts up to paw through his hair and Caleb shudders, eyes clenched shut. “I don't like it when my things tell me what to do.” 

There's something primally degrading about the way the slaver cards his fingers through his hair. Something that sets his teeth on edge and sends his muscles jumping with each caress. An animalistic unease that sends his chest stalling and acid creeping up his throat. 

Lorenzo leans in close, fingers tangled tight amongst the auburn and his breath hot against the side of his face. "And I especially don't like it when they _lie_ to me,” he snarls it out in a venomous whisper, releasing him with a shove that sends Caleb toppling.

His skull cracks into the stone, hands caught and useless behind him, and there's only a burst of stars behinds his eyelids. The world takes a spell to right itself before the tripled image of a retreating Lorenzo reaffirms into one. And he watches, dread creeping in, as the slaver extends a hand and an already heated poker is shoved into it with an alarming eagerness. 

“Just remember--" Lorenzo positions it over Yasha’s midsection, the heated, spear-like end illuminated a white-hot. “--this one's on you.” 

He stabs downward and there's the hollow thunk of metal colliding with wood as it slices cleanly through, finding little resistance. A keening, primal scream rips through him-- but it's not his own, and Yasha heaves against the shackles, involuntary tears streaming down her otherwise impassive mask as Lorenzo keeps it there, cauterizing a cylinder out of her that smokes and steams.Caleb can see Yasha’s abdomen flexing against the poker seared through it, can almost feel the metal rod stabbing through himself and taking away his ability to think and breath as he looks at it and knows it's his fault. 

“He had a familiar!” Jester cries out when Yasha’s scream cracks and breaks into nothing but a wheeze, the torch on the wall flaring a brilliant orange before dying down again. 

Caleb’s attention snaps to her, eyes wide and worried and unsure of what she might betray. 

Lorenzo mercifully removes the cooled poker and Yasha’s spine arches with it, following the metal as it leaves. The slaver hands it off to the same tattooed man and makes his way to the tiefling, looming over her, arms crossed. 

“Explain. Concisely and clearly. No tricks." 

“Well he-- he---" she has to breathe past the panicky hiccups, gulping down a shaky inhale to try and bat them back before continuing. 

“He had this- this hummingbird that collected things for him. She got him the picks to get out.” 

“And the haversack?” 

There's sluggish water striping down her cheeks, he can see the turmoil behind the way she gnaws at her lip, eyes darting towards the rest of them and settling on Beau. "I--I don't know.” 

Lorenzo hums, like he's considering something. Gaze roving over Jester and then the rest of them. There's calculations happening in those depths, something brewing in that slick obsidian. 

“Now that wasn't so hard was it.” He pats her on the head and she flinches away from it, sharp teeth bared uneasily. 

Yasha is gasping on the table, shivering, breathing deep and full, and Beauregard’s still on the ground, her own breathing shallow and short. The situation they've landed themselves into is finally hitting home as something truly dangerous as Caleb watches them. He's becoming increasingly aware with each passing interaction of how Lorenzo holds himself back with the barest amount of restraint. Always seemingly an edge away from severely maiming or perhaps even killing one of them and Caleb doesn't even think the slaver would lament much at all if they bit the dust down here. It's one thing to question someone, to torture for gain, but to torture for the sole purpose of breaking-- there's less limits. And even Caleb isn't entirely sure what Lorenzo is willing to do to achieve what he wants. And unlike interrogations, there's no amount of information they can turn over, or withhold, that will stop this. 

“Well half is half and I like to think I'm a man of my word.” He gestures to Yasha, Beau, Fjord, and Jester. “Put those four back for now.” He toes at Beau with his boot, sneering down at the still unconscious monk, “And get this one fixed up. I'm not done with it yet.” 

Caleb huffs out a grateful breath at the slaver’s words, watching the odd game of shuffling as the others are pulled back into their respective cells. Kyt, the human from before, kneels down and tends to Beau and then Yasha, respectively, before they are dragged into the dark and out of view as well. Lorenzo turns to their remaining gaggle, arms outstretched and there's promises of harrowing things in the way he looks them over. 

“So..." He claps his hands, rubbing them together, nearly anticipatory. “Half of my question’s been answered by your nice little tiefling friend, but I still want to know what was in that bag that's got you all so ‘mum's the word’ over it.” 

He's in a more jovial mood for sure, the mishap with Beau seemingly brushed aside with an answer to soothe him and Caleb’s not sure which is worse: a delighted Lorenzo or an angry one. Caleb hardly has the time to digest the fact that Shakäste can no longer send his bird to scout should he return, far too caught up in the way Lorenzo’s eyes skip to him, eager and keen. 

“ _Still_ no takers?” Lorenzo waves a hand, gesturing to the cells behind them. “And after I was so generous to not let your little guard dog die after it snapped at me.” 

Caleb grits his teeth. 

“S’Mighty rude of ‘em, boss,” Lida pipes up. 

Murmurs of agreement rise from the gathered slavers and there affirmations and jeers spur the angry heat between his shoulder blades to creep up his neck. They act like they aren't just glorified dogs themselves, like they aren't only held at bay by Lorenzo’s beck and call, their jowls slobbering and always hungry. 

Lorenzo raises a closed fist and they fall quiet immediately.

“If none of you want to answer me, then who wants to be first up on the table?” 

There's no answer. 

Caleb glances down the line, heart sticking against his ribs. Nott is busy shooting worried glances at him from his left, Keg is silent, wide-eyed, blank-faced and staring straight ahead, and Caduceus is quiet as well, eyes closed, head bowed.

If his lips were moving he might think the firbolg was praying.

“You were all so eager to talk moments ago,” the slaver drawls, slowly prowling back and forth in front of them, waiting.“Speak up or I'll just have to choose.”

He stops short in front of Keg, crouching so he's level with her, his smile sharp and knowing. “What about you?” he asks and the dwarf tries to recoil from the hand tilting her chin up,“I'm sure you'd like to know what I did to Yuto before I tossed him to the rats. I can even give you a first hand experience, free of charge.” 

For all the blank terror that's smothered Keg until now, that seems to finally shatter it. The dwarf jumps against her chains, fingers curled and searching for the slaver’s throat to color it the same way her’s has been. Lorenzo just chuckles, standing up and moving down the line.

“And you..." He stops in front of Caduceus, the firbolg’s head still bowed. “I don't appreciate you trying to lie to me, but _honestly_ it was such a poor attempt at one that I almost feel bad for you.” 

Caleb can see the irritated twitch of Lorenzo’s lips as the firbolg proceeds to ignore him, blissfully non-reactive and deep in some kind of meditative state. Lorenzo seems to grow bored of it and reaches forward, but stays his hand, head tilting like he's contemplating something before drawing it back, turning on his heel and continuing on.

Nott is next, her snaggled teeth on display as she hisses up at the slaver, ears tight to her skull. Lorenzo curls his lip back at her, reaching for a sheathed knife at his hip and crouching down in front of her.

“Normally I'd just kill things like you. Useless and non-marketable as you all are,” he muses, freeing the blade. 

Lorenzo presses it to her throat, his other hand yanking back on her left ear. Dark ichor begins to bead along the steel, trembles wracking up and down the goblin’s frame that have Caleb hissing, teeth grit. His limbs turn numb and red seeps, a pounding starting up in his ears like frenzied hoof beats. Lorenzo presses harder against the thin green skin, eyes sliding over to him almost knowingly. The pathetic, choked whimper that leaves Nott slicing across his own throat and he twists his wrists against the cuffs. His unease vanishes in a puff of smoke, overridden by a desire to turn Lorenzo to ash. 

He narrows his eyes and wills the slaver into flames.

But nothing happens and the blade is still resting precariously across Nott’s jugular. There's only a dreadfully satisfied spark in Lorenzo’s eyes. 

Like he's proven a point. 

“You're lucky this group seems to have such a soft spot for you,” the slaver finishes, reluctantly drawing the knife back and wiping it clean on her cloak, smirking when she jerks away from it. 

Caleb's thoughts are a tumultuous battlefield as Lorenzo finally turns to him. There's a seething red ringing his vision as he glares up at the approaching slaver and there's also that same, sucking swamp of black that snags at his ankles and pulls him down, whispering and beckoning him to fall back into that fear.

It offers complacency. It offers obedience. It tells him he should cower until the pain stops, until he's left alone, left alive and intact and still able to achieve what he wants. And it's all so appealing. Familiar and easy; the instinct etched into his bones. He knows it would be far simpler to fall into that familiar husk than to endure the anger and worry snapping up his limbs, stoking a flame under his ribs that almost hurts in it's ferocity. 

But anger ultimately wins, snuffing out the encroaching trepidation. The image of a knife pressed to Nott’s throat is snared in his mind and it burns across his furrowed brow, laid into the tight grimace that he dons against Lorenzo like a shield. He refuses to break eye contact, even as the slaver is leering over him, casting him into darkness, the torch light engulfed behind his hulking form. 

Caleb tries to convey every ounce of hurt he wants to burn into the slaver’s skin; for everything he's done so far, for everything he's about to do. All with one withering and barbed look.

Lorenzo frowns down at him, the ever present cock-sure smirk faltering. “You know, I didn't think I'd find a specimen more interesting than that divine blood, but _you_." Lorenzo leans down, eyes alight with a wicked, terrifying intrigue.“You're just full of surprises. aren't you?”

The slaver waves off the bowman behind Caleb, taking up the vacated space, fanning a hand across the back of his skull as he crouches beside him, forcing his head towards the table. Lorenzo leans in to breath his words against the shell of the ear furthest from the writhing goblin and Caleb hunches forward and away from the slaver as far as he can. 

“I wonder, just what you are you willing to do for your little friend.” 

Caleb grits his teeth, nerves like spiders skittering across his scalp from each point of contact. His stomach a frozen, bloodied chunk as it deigns to plummet and pummel each organ on the way down. He can see Lida and the other thugs smirking at him from around the table, their faces twisting into laughing fiends and fork-tongued devils in the sharp wavering shadows. He tries to look away, tuck his chin into his chest and escape those glowing coals boring into him from the dark, but fingers curl across his throat, lazily trailing up the column of it to hook just under his jaw and hold him fast. 

“Would you volunteer if it meant taking her place?”

He tries not to imagine Nott up there. 

Burnt and torn to ribbons by knives and brands and unspeakable things. Hooks dragged across her skin, bones broken, eyes empty, viscera slopping off the table in a steaming heap from a flayed gut. Smothered in grasping hands that take and pull and rip what they want from her flesh until she's dead in every fathomable way but physical. 

He can't let her be put back on that table.

The brand on her shoulder is already too much for him to bear. 

“Or are you still just a _coward_?” 

Caleb shakes his head. 

Unsure if the words came from the slaver arched over him or the demons crouched in his ears. Lorenzo laughs, low and gravely, and it mingles so fully with the things bickering in his head it terrifies him. 

“I'll--” He chokes up, throat tight. 

He’s staring at the table, sitting vacant across a yawning stretch of stone, watching it swim in and out of focus. Half disbelieving of what he's about to do and wholly terrified. Everything is screaming at him to refuse, self preservation trying to rear its ugly head, but he beats it back.

It's for _Nott._

He owes her this much. 

She's saved his life many times over by now and this time-- this time he can shield her from something potentially far worse. And he's not new to pain-- he knows pain-- but he also knows there won't be an end to this, that there's no goal here, that they just want to hear him scream, nothing quite like every other time he's had to endure anything similar. But he has to-- he has to--

“I will go...” 

There's a contented rumble from behind him that sends ice cracking down his spine. 

“Caleb! What the-- no! What the _fuck_ are you doing?!” Nott wrestles with her chains, straining towards him with everything she has. 

Lorenzo seems satisfied with his decision, backing off and yanking the connecting chain. Caleb slams into his previously dislocated shoulder with a jarring jolt, biting off the yelp that tries to escape him as he's dragged along, each jostle of uneven stone murder on the swollen ligaments. 

Nott struggles even harder, thrashing about, her poisonous yellow eyes brimming with tears that feel more like acid. Her face swirls into an incomprehensible blur, the shadow of the table beginning to smother him, his skull stuffed with buzzing swirling static. 

“I'll-- I'll go!” Nott suddenly blurts, voice tremoring, eyes wild. 

Lorenzo ignores her, unflinching. 

“Stop!” The jostling metal is now melding with her increasingly panicked breathing.“Take me instead!”

Caleb watches her go still as Lorenzo continues, unimpeded. Watches the gap between them grow larger, watches something war behind her wide eyes, watches something in them crumble and falter.

“I'll--” 

She curls in on herself and Caleb thinks he mirrors her as the shadows of the table fully engulf him. “I'll tell you what was in the fucking bag!”, she finally yells, eyes clenched shut and head turned away. 

Lorenzo finally stops, head cocking, and Caleb falls slack in his chains. Her words an almost physical blow as everyone's efforts to keep silent; all the bolts Beau took, the burns and hurts that were pressed into Yasha, evaporate in an instant.

But he can't really blame her.

He knows if she was the one being dragged towards that table he would do the same. 

“Go on,” the slaver encourages, looking back at the goblin, hand still curled around the chains. 

There's tears striping her cheeks, out of desperation and protectiveness, out of fear for him and his vision swims at the sight of them. She's looking at him, eyes searching and pleading and he nods minutely. It bleeds some of the tension from her frame, her chest rattling and she sucks in a breath and finally talks. 

“Th- There was this thing we put in there and I-I don't know what it was really, none of us did, but if you looked at it long enough you could get a sort of small redo on something. Like-- like editing your own luck. I- I don't know how to explain it really, that's all I know, I swear, please,” she rushes it out in a single breath, chest rising, flighty and quick. 

Her eyes are wide, boring into him, form hunched as far forward as she can be in her restraints, like she's trying to reach for him. Lorenzo takes an alarmingly long moment to mull over the information. Nott notices the pause and struggles forward, shuffling on her knees best she can. Caleb feels something in his chest cracking as she continues to beg for him.

Debasing herself for a thing that doesn't deserve it. 

“Please, you said if we told you everything that you'd stop!” 

“I did, didn't I?” the slaver drawls, looking back at the goblin, considering something. 

And Caleb can see it, that dark satisfaction brimming over as the slaver bares his teeth in a grin. 

“But I think I deserve to work over at least one of you for all the grief you gave me over two simple, little questions,” Lorenzo practically purrs. 

Nott answers him with a blood curdling shout. It’s a gurgling snarl and a frustrated yell tangled into one as she lunges against the chains, tugging at them, a small bristling ball of fury possessed, “You fucking _promised_ , motherfucker!”

The crossbow wielder stationed behind her drags her back, slamming a fist into her side as she twists to snap at him. 

Caleb comes to life in his own bonds, teeth bared in a grimace at the smirking man who wrestles Nott back and levels the crossbow at the back of her head again. 

“Technically--" Lorenzo starts, holding up a finger. "--I didn't promise anything. I gave you the rules and _you_ broke them first. In my eyes, this only seems fair.” 

He hoists Caleb up with the last word, dropping him onto the stained, gouged, and derelict wooden surface. The thugs are quick to replace his chains with the blood stained cuffs nailed to the table, and in little time he's caught on his back again, spread eagle across it. 

They start small. 

Ripping his nails from their beds, tearing apart one hand and then the other until they are raw and bloody and while it doesn't wrench any cries from him it's a constant sear of exposed heat. Then Lorenzo’s back, and he's thrust back into an all too familiar scenario as the slaver grabs his face, pinches his jaw and hooks a finger into his mouth, running it along his teeth. 

He croons with threats about how he can remove them, that someone would buy him teeth or no teeth and he can add each one to his collection. Hisses things into the space between them that sends Caleb shuddering as the fingers continue to probe and prod where they shouldn't. Jamming into the clotted mess of blood at the back of his gums, ripping the wound back open and tearing a yell from him that's muffled by the fingers hinging his lips apart. 

No more of his teeth are pulled, but the threat is there and very, very real. The feeling of Lorenzo’s fingers, tasting of sweat and blood and boiled leather, lingers far after they leave. 

“Now for the real thing.” Lorenzo drawls, unsheathing the knife still smeared with Nott’s blood and flaying up one sleeve in a single fluid motion. 

The point carves a groove up his arm as it goes, the two halves of his shirt slumping to either side, revealing a smattering of aged scar tissue. It's repeated on the other side, the stained and hole-worn shirt bunched up to reveal his fluttering ribs. Fingertips trail over a particularly long and lashing scar that disappears under his back where Caleb knows it spans the width of his shoulder blades, the tongue of a whip having curled across his front from where it bit into him.

“Looks like someone's already worked you over real well once upon a time.”The knife drags along the dip between his ribs, slicing ribbons in its wake. “They obviously didn't do a good enough job”, Lorenzo muses, knife trailing along another of the shallow grooves, splitting the skin. “But don't worry, we'll fix you up before you leave here. Can't sell unpolished goods after all.” 

Caleb has a feeling his version of 'fixing someone up' isn't what it should be. 

It continues like that for some time, the slaver carving furrows into him that weep crimson until his skin is so washed in bleeding cuts it's hard to see anything but red. The pain isn't agonizing, not quick or hot and stabbing; it's prolonged, sharp, like a paper cut but far more intimate and drawn out.

It feels like Lorenzo is carving his signature into him with each new line, crisscrossing them and fabricating a picture out of split skin that only the slaver knows the true meaning of. And when the slaver’s fingers slip around the knife, the hilt so sullied with blood, he waves a hand calling for something, but it's muffled around the way the slaver splits open the semi-healed glaive wound carved across his torso with his nails.

Caleb thanks whatever deities he can think of when someone slops a worn bucket of water onto the table, the fingers retreating from their search amongst the scabs and puss to reach for it. Lorenzo lofts it up, tossing the water across his torso and the tang of salt hits him far too late. The treated water seeps into every open wound and digs in, the mineral tearing its way down and circling in a torrential gyre that has him writhing against the bonds to try and claw it out, bloodied, nailless fingers dragging uselessly against the wood. It gets into his eyes, in his nose, and his mouth and he splutters, coughing against it, mucous and saline already welling up to expel it. 

There's a throaty amused laugh above him and Lorenzo calls for something, but Caleb can't see just yet, eyes bleary. 

He finally blinks the last of it from his vision to see a water skin brought over. The slaver drinks from it, and Caleb finds himself watching the curl of water down his throat, tongue heavy, mouth dry and stuffed with cotton. The stinging in his wounds taking a back burner to the now ever present burn for water. 

“Oh, did you want this?” Lorenzo's lips curl, knowing, shaking the skin..“How about this, answer some questions for me and I'll let you have some.” 

Caleb just nods, watching the beads of water run along the skin, transfixed

“Careful now, I'll know if you lie to me,” He gestures to someone off to the side as he says it. It's the tattooed man from before, his snaggled teeth on display. “Make yourself useful.” 

The man bounds forward, already muttering an incantation under his breath, eyes closed. Up close Caleb can see the tattoos from before are actually hundreds of inked chains criss-crossing and circling his exposed arms, disappearing under the dark robes. A necklace of bones and teeth sits around his neck, a large single link of rusted chain hangs from it, the thing now clasped tightly in his hands. The indecipherable runes etched beneath the heavy layers of oxidation pulse with a heady dark crimson. 

The feeling is familiar, like when they had a thousand questions for an anxious and harried Mollymauk in the belly of a seedy bar and Jester ensured that he would be more than forthcoming for once. He wonders why Lorenzo didn't just do this in the first place and spare them all the theatrics. The satisfied glimmer in the slaver's eyes makes Caleb think that Lorenzo just enjoys watching them squirm. 

“I had to call for reinforcements after you lot about cleared us out. Needless to say, some of them have proven to be useless halfwits. Others like Adiran here, well, they have their uses.” 

Adiran nods, wringing his hands about the necklace and glancing over the diluted blood still dripping down Caleb's chest. 

“Now, all I want to know is a few simple things and if you don't talk, we can always just continue with this,” he flashes the knife, the torchlight glittering across the stains of red. “Not that I would be opposed to that in the slightest.” 

“This first ones easy, so don't worry,” He swipes the blade clean with his thumb, inspecting it, “Which of your party are casters and which aren't?” 

He doesn't answer at first, but he talks himself out of his silence, telling himself that Lorenzo had a vague idea already. 

He tells him, but he doesn't say Nott, or Keg, or Beau, not even Yasha, even though he's seen almost all of them do things that were preternatural or beyond reason. But he knows it's the ones that Lorenzo hasn't seen do anything worthy of being considered casting. It's a thin line and he feels himself being compelled to spill the truth and all of it in stark vivid detail, but he reigns it in. 

Lorenzo nods absentmindedly, like he already figured as much, rubbing the blood between his thumb and forefinger, watching it slide across his skin. 

“Can you cast spells without your little books?” 

He grinds his teeth, not wanting to say it but knowing if he doesn't talk it's more of a knife and no water. 

“Yes… and no.” 

Lorenzo raises a brow, waiting, "Go on.”

He keeps his mouth shut. 

“You know I can still rip those pretty teeth from your mouth, maybe that'll loosen up that stubborn jaw," A thumb smears the blood across his cheek, dips past his pressed lips to run over his clenched teeth before drawing back. 

Lorenzo flips the blade in his hand and crosses his arms, waiting. 

“It-- They--” He doesn't want to tell him, he likes having some semblance of control, at least one card close to his chest. Something to hold onto, keep as his own. 

“What about the goblin? She could stand to lose quite a few. I might even be doing her a favor by taking some of those things out,” Lorenzo continues his threat.

He pales. 

“If it's a weak enough spell, then no… I... I do not need them..." he finally relinquishes, halting and slow. 

He doesn't mention that he only really needs the book for spells he hasn't committed to memory recently, that things like fire could, theoretically at least, come to him with a flick of his wrist if he were free. 

“Good to know.”

He's concerned why the slaver wants to know in the first place. He fears for the integrity of his spell books again and has the distinct impression they've been used for kindling somewhere upstairs. 

“How about one more question?" Lorenzo picks up the skin and shakes it. “Or do you think you've already earned this?” 

Lorenzo seems to relish in his turmoil under the spells influence. Caleb hears that voice say he doesn't deserve it. That any semblance of luxury is wasted on him. But he needs that water, wants it more than anything he's ever wanted in his life in that moment.

He nods, and it's small, jerky, circumnavigating the spell.

Lorenzo smirks and turns the skein over above his head. He tries to get down as much as he can, but in moments he is spluttering, the liquid rushing down his nostrils and all the wrong places, choking him. He coughs and hacks curling against the restraints, turning his head to escape the onslaught. The little bit he manages to get is hacked back up onto the table, mingling with his bile and spit. 

“Lesson one; when I ask you a question, you answer it to the fullest extent.” 

He goes to nod, still trying to expel the water caught in his windpipe. 

“Now, I'm curious..." The hands map over his scars again and Caleb shivers at the rasp of rough skin and ragged nails splayed over his torso. “How did you earn these? You don't really strike me as someone who gets into a lot of physical altercations.” 

And Caleb is unsure if the zone of truth also affects Lorenzo or if he's always so blasé about these things. 

The slaver isn't even wrong though.

He knows what he looks like. 

His chest practically concave, ribs outlined dangerously against his skin, the thinnest trace of muscles along the bones and yet, somehow, littered in a thousand scars. 

“I--” Caleb shakes his head, pushing against he spell. 

“Do we need a review of lesson one?” 

“No.” 

“Good." Lorenzo smiles, leaning close. "You're finally learning.” 

He can feel the slaver watching him as he tries to recoil from the fingers fanning across the fresh and old marks along his ribs. 

“You know, I recognize some of these. Whips always make the most distinct marks." Lorenzo eyes him, brow cocked, mouth sharp. “Especially on humans.” 

Caleb just needs to hold out a little longer. The spell should fizzle out at any moment. He just has to ignore the way the fingers dip under the collar of his shirt, dragging it to the side, inspecting the things still hidden beneath the bunched up garment. 

“Who was it?” 

Caleb doesn't know why Lorenzo is so fixated on it. On knowing who split open his skin so many years ago. 

“Your father?” He's more sickened by the thought of his father being the one to do all of that to him than the trail of calloused fingertips down his shoulder. 

“A former owner?” Disturbed at the prospect that Lorenzo thinks he could have been a slave before. Worried about what the slaver sees in him that might have him drawing those conclusions. 

“A teacher? Come on, I think I deserve to know something about you, especially after you _slaughtered_ my former crew.”

Caleb doesn't talk, even when the fingers dip far lower than he would ever be comfortable with, tracing the exposed line of his pelvis and stopping short at the waistband of his slacks before dragging back up his side. He just steels his jaw against it and stares up at the ceiling, escaping into the grid work of it. 

He knows this damning zone of truth will end soon. Knows that he owes Lorenzo nothing. What he doesn't know is if it's dangerous that the slaver thinks that any of them do. Frankly it sends something red hot skittering across his skin, angry and raw, a wound as fresh and aggravated as the ones decorating him opened up. 

"Not even gonna tell me why you had the gall to raid my nest, huh?" Lorenzo tuts, fingers playing over the jump of his exposed abdomen now, and Caleb recoils in the chains best he can, teeth grit and unease slipping around under his skin. "You killed some of my best men you know." Lorenzo traces along the curving slope of a rib, up to the hem of the shirt hiked up his chest, and the digits begin to slip their way under as Caleb pulls at the chains and presses back against the table, away from the wandering hand.

“You shouldn't have come after mine first then.” Caleb bites out against his better judgement, breathing heavily, eyes flicking up to the slaver's, vitriol dripping off of every last syllable. 

He watches a muscle in Lorenzo’s jaw jump, the rough slide of teeth audible as he grinds them and mercifully withdraws his hand from its unnerving search.

“Huh,” the accompanying head tilt is matched by an exasperated chuckle that pulls ice from Caleb's veins. 

He barely has time to process what's happened before he's staring at a knife embedded through his right palm, stuck fast into the wood beneath, blood beginning to well up around the steel.

He doesn't even have time to process the pain. 

“You see, this is what I mean. No matter how much progress I think I've made you always find some way to fight me,” the slaver growls, leaning over him, almost nose to nose as he twists the knife. 

Caleb can feel something _shift_ with that and an involuntary keen bubbles up with the pop of tendons. 

“You're a walking contradiction.” Lorenzo eyes flick over to where Nott is. “A coward who cares enough to put himself under the knife for a _creature_.” Looks back down to the scars mapping him. “A scarred, broken-in man with a spine.” 

Settles back on him and Caleb hopes Lorenzo can see the things smoldering there, hopes the slaver can see the ways he plans to kill him mapped out in his eyes. 

“And I'd be a liar if I didn't admit that I want to find whatever puts that fire in your eye." Lorenzo wrenches the blade free from where its wedged into the wood. “And _snuff it out_.” 

His hand is a raw angry mess and it throbs in time with everything else carved into him. He doesn't know why or how he intrigued Lorenzo. Whether it was the way he ran from him or the way he snarled and spit at him in the same number of seconds. He doesn't know what it entails for him, but judging by the state of Yasha it can't be anything good. 

That compelling feeling finally fizzles out and Adiran steps back fully. 

“Times up,” Lorenzo says, wiping the blade clean and finally sheathing it. "But I think we made some good progress today, don't you?” 

Caleb just stares at him, mustering up the last dredges of untethered fury still smashing around in him. Lorenzo sneers at it, grimacing. 

“Put it's gag back in.” The slaver waves, dismissively.

It's secured even tighter this time and it bites into the corner of his lips. 

He watches Lorenzo whirl on Adiran, fisting his hand in the human’s cloak and dragging him close, rumbling low and angry, “Start tracking him, find out where he is, and get a crew sent out to retrieve him immediately. I want that haversack back here _yesterday_.” 

Adiran visibly pales, scuttling off the second he's let go, scampering up the stairs, tail tucked. There's a long pause, the other slavers warily glancing between Lorenzo and where Adiran raced off. 

“That means the lot of you! Get your asses out there and searching! Now!” 

They all immediately drop what they are doing and scatter, rushing up to join the departed cleric. 

Lorenzo pinches the bridge of his nose, grumbling, “Can't believe I got saddled with the most fucking incompetent imbeciles.”

“And I blame you for this, just so you know,” the slaver continues, like its an inside joke, like Caleb should laugh with him, like they're old friends. 

Lorenzo gets him back into his old restraints and back into the cell, leaving him on the ground and away from the manacles dangling along the wall. The slaver ruffles his hair one last time and departs with a low bassy chuckle that sticks in his chest. 

His entire body feels like an exposed nerve. 

The feeling of a knife crawling across his skin and hands skittering after it chase him in the shadows of the cell. The sensation of them inspecting every inch of him even as he recoiled and shied away, fills him with a sickening and primal unease. 

There's something that he saw creeping in Lorenzo’s eyes as he worked him over. It looked like a promise, dark and heady, and full of things to come that he can't even comprehend yet. And for all his book smarts and intellect, it is somehow terrifying not knowing quite what lays beyond the sunrise. The ideas he does have only make the feeling worse. 

He goes to sleep restless and hungry that night. 


	5. Collars and Decisions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More brief refs to a canonical character death.
> 
> Various brief descriptions of tortures. (cutting with knives, salt rubbed into wounds, water boarding/drowning, burning, whipping)

He wakes up to panic and pandemonium. 

He wakes up to being dragged out of the cell and thrown into the corner of the chamber with the others. 

That internal thing in him tells him it's the next afternoon already and that he hasn't eaten or drank anything in about three days now. He's bleary with rampant infection and blood loss, and he feels blurry and unfocused, limbs sluggish with the dryness in his mouth and in his veins. He feels like he's boiling and freezing, glazed eyes watching uncomprehendingly as a figure in robes dipped in dark finery and gold filigree sweeps by him and to the now empty cells. 

Lorenzo sidles up behind them, hands on his hips as he stops to inspect his domain..“As you can see I've had to employ crude methods of keeping magic users in check for quite awhile now.” 

The robed figure stops from where they are laying out scrolls and pulling stone carving tools from their side bag. “I can see that,” they bite out, eyes sweeping over him and the others, lingering on the gags and the way they are bound hand to feet. 

“I'm just glad that House Jaggentoth thinks my goods are worth enough to invest more gold into my-- business practices. Truly, I do.” 

And it's the first time Caleb's seen Lorenzo close to nervous.

It's not full nervousness though, there's no quaking voice or shaking fingers but he's definitely at more of a loss for words than he usually is, far more restrained. 

“I can pass on the good word,” they bite out, seemingly used to this and thoroughly exasperated by it. “Now do you mind?” 

“Of course, of course, don't let me interrupt you,” the slaver scowls at the figure’s back once they turn away and Lorenzo wanders over to where there's another robed figure. A bundle is cradled in this ones arms, their features hidden in the shadows of their hood. Caleb catches a glimpse of purple-blue skin, a deep indigo, and he's never been more glad they got that haversack out, the consequences be damned. He knows he shouldn't draw conclusions, and that these drow could very well not be associated with Xhorhas, but anything is possible. 

He drifts in and out for awhile when no one comes to poke at him or threaten him with bodily harm for once. He presses his fever slick temple against the cool stone, and listens to the murmurs of arcane incantations and the rhythmic tick of metal against stone. Finally, there's a flash of green light behind his eyelids that he can't ignore and he snaps to attention, glancing about, worried. 

“That should be more than adequate,” The figure dusts off their robes as they stand, the hood pushed back and sharp drow features on full display now as they gather their supplies. 

They make their way towards their counterpart, steps so light he almost thinks they are floating. They reach past the soft crushed velvet of the bundle and pull out a shining metal ring, runes marring every inch of its surface. They hold it out, offering it to Lorenzo and gesturing to the rest of the revealed and gleaming pile. 

“Now for the collars." They pry one open, the seal breaking with a spark of green light. "They serve the same purpose as the sigils and create a zone of inert magic, but _only_ on the person. So make sure you remove any arcane artifacts they may have on them. These should be able to aid you with your transportation issues and ease the shuttling of your chattel from one territory to another.” 

Lorenzo practically snatches it up, eager and delighted at his prospects, turning and inspecting it in the light, running his fingers along the runes. The slaver whistles low and impressed.“Well I'll be damned.” 

“They can only be removed by the person who puts them on and you'll need to make a very minute sacrifice of your own blood across each one to seal it, but I'm sure that's no trouble for you." The drow looks Lorenzo up and down, lip curling distastefully, but the slaver is already ignoring them, enraptured by the device in his hand. 

“I'll leave you to it. Come Xyla’t, we have affairs elsewhere to attend to,” the two sweep from the chamber, almost eager to mount the steps and leave the grimey, blood-soaked torture dungeon behind them. 

Lorenzo hands the stack of collars off to one of his thugs, the whip thin half-elf donning them like oversized bracelets.There's eight of them and he can see even more left in the discarded fabric. 

“Well, let's get this show on the road I guess.” 

Caleb's blearily aware of being dragged forward, lined up again with the others once more, stationed at the far end this time, furthest from Lorenzo and the collars.

He tries to inspect it closer, grasp for any familiar symbols in the metal, but they are all foreign to him. It's something he's never seen before and like the Dodecahedron the essence of it feels different, like it's not meant for this land, but it persists anyways by someone's beck and call. 

“I know these are meant for when I'm moving you lot around, but I kinda want to test them out. See how they fare against all of you and if they're any good or not.” 

He watches them lock the metal circles around each throat, Lorenzo slicing his palm, sickly deep, red-black seeping from the cut, sluggish and far slower than it should be. 

He lingers on Yasha, slowly locking the collar around her throat, smearing his blood along it and watching the seal melt away with a seam of bright viridian. The barbarian glares up at him, grinding at the bit of her gag, almost daring him to take it off and risk losing a finger. Lorenzo just cups her face with the palm of the bleeding hand and leans in close, whispering something in her ear before drawing back. Yasha thrashes against the chains, the thick ichor palm-shaped and prominent against her pale cheek, her gag left in as he moves along, eyes lingering on her collar for a moment too long. 

He snaps the collar around Beauregard's neck so harshly it pinches at the skin at the back of her neck and the monk yelps behind the gag. She tries to crack her head downwards and slam his hands away, but he ignores her efforts. Another slaver moves holds her head back as he repeats the same process he did before and he leaves her gag in for now as well. 

For Nott he brings up a small collar, the size of a human child’s neck and Caleb remembers just how absolutely shitty these people are at the sight of it. It's bad enough that they sell people into slavery to begin with, but the fact that they unashamedly sell children into the throes of slavery as well makes him doubly sure they need to die. The fact that some of the children don't even make it to that point triples it.

For the others the process goes smoothly and without a hitch, their chains removed but replaced with something that's somehow far more degrading. 

And then Lorenzo finally reaches him. Crouching down with a collar in one hand and the other almost involuntarily moving to tug through his hair, maneuvering his head so his neck is fully exposed, throat bared. The slaver snaps it on slowly, like he knows how this feels and the weight that settles around Caleb's collar bones is heavy and oppressive. Lorenzo’s eyes are heavy and hooded, and it's the same crawling way he inspected the collar around Yasha’s neck, appraising as he smears blood along it and lingers for a moment too long. 

He's mercifully put back in the cell with the others, gag removed. 

They're all in the same cell now and it's awfully cramped with the number of them, the new runes and sigils etched into the floor most likely the reason for the change. 

Nott rushes him the second the bars slam shut and he crouches down, enveloping the goblin in his own arms, trying to smother out the trembles he can feel there. 

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry--,” she babbles into his blood-caked and tattered shirt and he cuts her off, smoothing her hair down. Ignores the pain in his bloodied fingernail beds as he holds her against him. 

“It was not your fault.” 

“But I could have volunteered. I could have gone in your place. I'm used to this kind of thing, I've been on one of those tables before. I’ve- I've been the one helping put people on them before.” She chokes it into his shoulder fingers digging into his back and she clings to him like he might be dragged back out the second she lets go.

The way she chokes out the words and stutters over them makes him think she wouldn't be as put together as she claims she would be. It sounds like a bluff and he just nods and accepts it. He knows he can't let her take his place, because he doesn't deserve that kind of thing from anyone, especially her. 

“I'm supposed to be the one protecting you,” she mutters it, muffling it amongst his ruined sleeve and he's not sure if he's supposed to have heard that part.

“I am fine. I--It is fine, Nott. I am okay,” he shushes her, let's her wring out her frustration and fear into him.

He can feel his own vein of it curled up inside him, slithering and searching for a chance to spill out from the cracks. But he can't let it, won't let it. Not yet. Not when he has to pretend like he's not falling apart at the seams so that Nott has something to hold onto right now. 

There's something grumbled into his chest and he pulls back, hands on her shoulders, grounding her. 

“ _Was_?” 

“I _hate_ him,” and even with snot caked under her nose and fresh tracks down her cheeks he can see a poisonous hatred in the yellow. Her hands are curled into claws and eyes narrowed, teeth grit and bared like Lorenzo is here and she's saying it to his face. 

“I do too.” 

“We all fucking do." And Beauregard finally has her gag removed apparently. “I'm gonna rip his fucking nuts off and make him fucking eat them the next time he tries to fucking touch me.” 

“Not that I wouldn't love to see you castrate him, but can we talk about what the _fuck_ just happened?” 

“What are these things?” Jester asks alongside Fjord, tugging weakly at her collar. 

“Have you ever read about anything like this before, Caleb?” Fjord asks, fingers wandering over his own new addition. 

“Nein, no, nothing like this. This is ..." he tries to find the right word for it, eyes darting along the stones. “This is foreign magic.” 

“What do you mean foreign? Is that even possible?” 

“Well, for one, the Dodecahedron is not something of this realm, or at least it is not fully comprehensible using the lexicon of magic immediately available to me in the Empire. It is just… different.” 

“Does it have anything to do with it being the drow that seemed to be the ones that made it?” 

“Maybe. I mean..." he thinks about the attack on Zadash and the drow they left to die in the sewers, “There is quite a lot going on with the drow that we know nothing about.” 

“That’s a fair point,” Fjord admits. 

“The world is vast...and holds thing in it that want to see people like these slaver’s succeed.” 

Caleb snaps his head over to Yasha, she's clutching the wound in her torso, something infectious rattling in her chest as she speaks, but her voice is distant almost like she's reciting something she's heard or was told once before. 

“There's tales of dark things....of a crawling worm that bore the Underdark beneath Exandria. Of something chained and ancient beneath the ground. The patron of jailers and slavers... His tunnels littered with manacles and the evidence of his ruin and woe.” 

The ensuing pause is long and drawn out, the rest of them glancing at each other, wide eyed and confused. 

“Woah, hey, Yasha where the fuck did _that_ come from?” 

Yasha doesn't elaborate further, doesn't even answer Beau’s question, leaning heavily against the stone and gritting her teeth, pressing even harder on the gaping hole in her gut, smearing her sullied cheek into her shoulder to try and wipe the blood there off. 

“One of theirs is probably a follower of this or some similar aberration. I felt it, when he channeled his god’s divinity..." Caduceus pauses, running his hands over a patch of stubborn moss or lichen he's set himself up next to and somehow managed to find. “It didn't-- It wasn't right. It felt dark and ancient. It felt hungry...” 

“Wait, wait, wait what the fuck are we talking about here?” Fjord raises his hands. "There's an evil worm beneath this place?” 

“No, I don't... I don't think so? Maybe not here, but his ideas are here. Subjugation, control... Your cities... are littered with the trade of creatures and beasts. The Empire and its surrounding lands are suffering..." Yasha hisses suddenly, sucking in a sharp breath around the wound before continuing, there's something burning and distant in her eyes, “You point your fingers at Xhorhas and you aren't wrong... it's wastes can be horrible...but we have cities, we have civilization just like you do...I don't know exactly where this worm calls home... but it could very well be here....beneath our feet.” 

“So that cleric, he's a follower of this worm guy?” Beau tilts her head, like she's trying to absorb all of this. 

“From what I could tell...maybe." Caduceus affirms, nodding. 

“Okay, cool, great, so now we have theories about the magic doo-da stuff, but that still doesn't explain how the fuck we bust out of these.”

“I don't think we can.” 

“Well, I, mean have any of you tried anything? Thrown some magic at it and, I don't know, tried to like overload it or something?” 

“I do not think it works like that.” 

“Well how the fuck would you know, Caleb, have you _tried_?” 

“No, I have not," he bites out, “but the drow said it created a zone of inert magic. So, _Beauregard_ , it is basically a dead magic zone stacked on top of a dead magic zone. Thus, magic is kaput here.” 

And he would have been sent panicking and struggling if it affected the essence of items too. The pendant around his neck and now tucked, hidden under the collar, heavier than it should be. 

The monk gnashes her teeth, nostrils flaring. He watches her clench her fists and he's familiar enough with her now that he knows she wants to punch something. 

“Motherfucking-- I'll just rip the fucking thing off then.” 

She claws at it, barely able to slip her fingers under it, the fit is eerily snug, and she strains. Neck tensing, fingers turning red then white at the knuckles and teeth bared, but it doesn't budge. 

“Son of a --” the monk slams her palm into the wall next to her, panting harsh and growling. 

“Beau,” Yasha admonishes from where she's slumped next to her, removing one of her blood caked hands from the cauterized wound to grip the monk’s shoulder and hold her still. “There's nothing we can do right now.” 

“What so we're all just gonna sit here until they come back down and fuck us over even more? And then what about when they start separating us and selling us to the highest bidder? What then? Are we just gonna sit around and fucking take it?” 

Yasha squeezes her shoulder and despite the glimmer of a cold sweat across her brow and the trembles in her abdomen draws the monk in close. Beau goes, almost reluctantly, a rage still smoldering in her eyes, but Caleb can see her desire not to further injure the barbarian winning out as she rests her head on the taller woman’s shoulder and goes quiet and still. 

“Do you think he's planning on selling us?” Jester pipes up from where she's laying on the ground, using Fjord’s thigh as a makeshift pillow. There's dark bruises under her eyes betraying a desire for sleep and food and basic necessities that doesn't make its way into her voice as much as it probably should. 

“He mentioned when we were trying to get to you guys that he might keep us as pets,” Nott murmurs from where she's curled up under his arm. 

“What the hell does that mean?” Fjord asks, brow furrowed. 

“He mentioned work camps on the Xhorhas borders to me,” Caduceus adds. 

“And he'll probably just end up killing me,” Keg laughs, wry and dejected and beyond wrung out. 

No one's sure how to reply to that, the dwarf tucked into the corner furthest from them, chin propped on her knees. 

He can tell a part of Keg has already given up.

He can feel a part of himself starting to give up too. 

 

“So…” Beau starts, fiddling with the tattered ribbon on her pants, as she changes the subject and avoids looking at the sullen dwarf, “when do we get fed around here?” 

“Not often enough, that's for fucking sure,” Fjord grits out. 

“How long has it been since you last ate?” Caleb asks. 

“Three, maybe four days since the last time. It's hard to remember.”

“What about water?” 

“About the same.” 

There's something cold and deadful in his gut at the realization.

Jester and Fjord, and Yasha by extension, have more on their bones to burn through and survive off of, but him and Nott, they were still fresh off of a diet derived from whatever pickings they could find in the woods. He knows if his ribs are considered concave that Nott’s are practically collapsible and that he could survive for a bit, but he's afraid for her. Her physiology is all kinds of different and while he knows he can go a week or so without food before his stomach lining starts to eat itself bloody, he doesn't know how long a goblin can go before it's too late. 

She's already lethargic and he doesn't know if it's from dehydration, lack of food, or even sleep. She's slumped against him, tucked under his arm, eyes bleary and skin warm to the touch. He thinks it might have something to do with the bursting pustules along her shoulder where the brand is, the once green skin white and putrice, dark and leaking blood in some places. 

At the very least he knows she will need water very soon with the amount she's sweating and shivering. Himself included if the mounting chills and encroaching bite of his own fever is anything to go by. 

He looks to Fjord, brow creased.“Do you think he will have them bring any down soon?” 

“It's impossible to tell.” 

“Is there a way to make sure he does?” 

“If you figure one out, let me know.” 

Yasha suddenly tenses and shifts, interrupting them as she hunches around the wound in her gut and groans. Beau steadies her, forehead pressed against hers and there's words so uncharacteristically soothing coming from the monk that Caleb thinks he's hearing things. Something has changed in the short time they were imprisoned separately. And to be fair, a lot of dynamics have shifted here, now that they're all chained to the same fate. The two are closer than before, freer in touching and soothing and in more ways than just how he comforts and consoles Nott and vice versa.The women are still bordering on friendly, but edging towards something more. It's not lost on Jester either and even with how wrung out and exhausted she is her tail still twitches excitedly as she watches the two, stars practically bursting in her eyes. 

“That's so cute,” she stage whispers to Fjord and the half-orc rolls his eyes at the half-hearted glare Beau shoots their way. 

Yasha slumps against the wall, the spasm of pain mercifully passing, and there is one thing he is still confused by however as he looks back over to Beau.The bolt strikes are missing from her skin while Yasha is still covered in bandages, the wounds peeking through. 

“How did…?” He gestures to his own arm, looking pointedly at Beau’s unmarred one. 

“Oh, shit, yeah that.” She turns her arm about like she might find one hiding somewhere along it, but there's nothing. 

“That guy slipped me a potion for some reason apparently, or at least that's what Yasha told me. He was supposed to just get me stabilized and off death's door like he did with her or whatever, but he juiced me up instead.” 

Caleb's knows It's Kyt she's referring to, his memory still sharp and crystal clear. And yet in spite of that he can't recall having noticed him doing so and apparently no one around him had either. 

“He might be a good one...” he mutters reluctantly, knowing all too well that the work you do doesnt always define the individual-- yet it still does not excuse the actions. And it is a weak link in the chain they could exploit down the road if the man truly has empathy where he shouldn't. 

“He still came to work for fucking slavers of his own volition so I'm not about to mark him, or any of them, as ‘one of the good guys’.”

“That is... fair.” But Caleb knows far too well how easy it is to get caught up in being on the wrong side of something and not realizing it until it's too late. But none of them deserve forgiveness for this-- and neither does he for the things he put people through as well. 

“What if he thinks you're hot and didn't want to see you all busted up?” Jester adds and he can tell she's trying to lighten the mood, but it falls flatter than it usually would, the glimmer of metal under her chin making it all kinds of odd to joke about. 

“Then I'll break his fucking face in.” 

“Geez, little harsh there, champ," Fjord hisses. 

“I don't give a fuck, that mother fucker helped put this shit on my shoulder." She jabs a fingers towards the healed over brand on herself, nose wrinkled and eyes narrowed. The healing potion seeming to have taken away the risk of infection and prolonged healing period the rest of them would have to suffer through, but leaving the skin darkened, raised, and warped. “So once I get the hell out of here I'm shoving that brand straight up his ass.” 

Caleb doesn't really blame her.

“Well... I for one am gonna try and get some shut eye before they come back down here if y'all don't mind," Fjord mutters, laying back, bunching up a tattered collection of cloth under his head. 

And Caleb can see that Fjord definitely needs it, the bruises under his eyes turning the skin under them almost black. Jester yawns and he can tell she's relishing in the ability to finally stretch her arms above her head after so long of them locked behind her. She pillows her head back against Fjord’s thigh, unashamedly nuzzling into it. The half orc already too far gone to protest or care, and soon enough there's half snores and snuffles from their side of the cell. 

Yasha has gone quiet as well, maneuvered so her head is in Beau’s lap, the monk brushing her fingers through the barbarian’s chopped up mane. The monk's eyes distant and angry and he doesn't think she can sleep right now.

And neither can he. 

There's too much tromping around in his head to let him. The cuts and burns and multitude of things flayed into him all throb in tandem and he thinks that even if his thoughts were calm enough to fathom sleep his body's too wrung out to consider it.

Beau waits until the cell is filled with quiet breathing and closed eyes and ears before she finally talks, whispering across the space to him. "Do you think we made the right decision?” 

And it's so quiet and so not Beauregard that he's taken aback for a moment, unsure where the vein of quiet introspection is coming from or what birthed it. He's not even sure how to answer her anyways. He would like to think they did, but he's starting to doubt himself and he's up to his neck in regrets with each passing day.

“I hope so.”

She nods. “Me too.” 

She goes quiet and the torch is almost dead now, but he can still see her brush a strand of hair from Yasha’s forehead, eyes flitting over her face before turning back to him. 

“Is Molly dead because of us, Caleb?” 

He's caught off guard by that one, his own eyes flicking down to the sleeping barbarian and he wonders if Beau told her yet or if the aasimar already figured it out from the lack of lavender and wicked smiles. 

He doesn't know how to answer this one either.

It's a loaded question with a thousand possible conclusions so he chooses the safest one, the one that has his blood roiling the most and the one he knows she needs to hear. 

“Mollymauk is dead because of Lorenzo.” It's what he says, but he doesn't fully believe it, the conviction behind it falling flat somewhere halfway through. 

“Yeah, but,” she worries at her lip, “Do you ever think about how he could have lived out his life with the circus... and Yasha and stayed happy and-- and _alive_ if he never met us?” 

He would be a liar if he hadn't considered it. 

“Yes, sometimes." 

She starts to nod and he can see her open her mouth to reply but he cuts her off. 

“But I do not think he would regret his decision to go with us either.” 

“How do you know that for sure?” 

And it's the first time since they laid Mollymauk to rest that he's had a glimpse past that dog toothed armor. There's something shiny in her eyes and he wants to turn away from it. 

“I do not... but Mollymauk never really struck me as someone who had a lot of regrets.” 

Beau laughs, and it's wet and laced with something unspoken. 

“Yeah, you're probably right." She swipes at her eyes, quick and whip-like, destroying the evidence before it can even emerge and a part of him questions if he saw them in the first place. 

“He was a bit of a bastard though..." and she says it through a chuckle, like she's remembering some specific time the two of them squabbled or traded jibes. 

“Just a bit,” he agrees, the hint of a smile pulling at him as he watches the torch outside the cell waver and wane and then slowly die. 

 

 

\----------- ----------- ------------ ------------

 

 

There's a day of reprieve before Lorenzo is back and he doesn't take him or Yasha to the table this time. Instead he pulls out the others and turns them out with all manner of instruments. Even smothered in sickness and with an oppressive infectious heat in his skull he can still feel parts of himself snagging on every ragged scream and cry from them and he's as raw and bloodied inside as they are outside when they return. 

Nott returns to him with slashes laced up and down her arms, a gap in her top teeth where one of the front ones has been pulled, and burns pressed into her feet that make her limp and whimper with each step until she is forced to shuffle towards him on her knees, and he tugs her to him the rest of the way. Hiding her against his chest and glaring out past the bars where he knows Lorenzo leers. He silently promises to tear the slaver apart piece by piece for every time the goblin trembles against him. 

The slaver says nothing in return for once, only turning to the next one, cold, methodical, and focused. It's uncharacteristically chilling and he doesn't know if he prefers the loud-mouthed and arrogant Lorenzo, or this quiet, careful sadist. 

Both are equally terrible. 

Beau is thrown back in snarling and scrambling up from where she's landed, rushing the bars as they clang shut. She beats her fists against them screaming obscenities and meeting the eyes of the slavers just outside. He envies that unyielding ferocity, but he doesn't envy the things spanning her shoulders and spine. She's caked in blood, familiar lash marks tearing across her back, royal blue shirt torn to ribbons, and the angry weep of blood trailing down from every point where the whip managed to bite into bare skin. She stands, snarling and pacing for some time before finally deigning to sit, hissing and spitting the whole way and Yasha rests a hand on her shoulder, careful to avoid the splitting gashes there.

Caduceus walks back in of his own volition, but it's the most frazzled he's ever seen the impassive firbolg be. Each one of his nails are missing, a familiar burn striking across Caleb's own missing ones at the sight of it, and he's littered in thousands of tiny cuts that blend with his fur, dyeing the strands a vibrant red and deadly pink with each passing second. Caleb doesn't understand the glimmer at the edge of each one until he realizes they are salt rocks and that they have been rubbed into every cut and left there to fester and burn. 

Fjord is dragged back in, unconscious and dripping water across the cell and Jester who's been returned with her own new set of tearing wounds across her arms and stomach rushes to him, checking him over with quaking hands and pulling his head into her lap, smoothing his hair down when he doesn't wake up. The sound of the half orc being slowly and methodically drowned outside the cell is still haunting. And Caleb would offer to help check to see if the half-orc is okay, but his arms are full of one goblin and he clings onto her as Lorenzo pulls out another. 

Keg takes the longest and for a second he thinks Lorenzo might actually do it, might actually kill her when the sounds outside the cell crescendo and fall deadly silent, but she's thrown back in and it's hard to see the dwarf under all the blood. Beau drags her away from the cell door and props her up against the stone, checking her over. 

They're all panting and hurt and curled up in their corners and against the walls to process the pain and the things that come with it when Lorenzo steps back in and looks them over. Nott presses further into him and he tries to hide her under his arms. The slaver’s attention snapping over to him when she makes a low, awful sound against him.

“I'm glad to see you're all finally starting to understand where you stand in the food chain around here.” 

Yasha has to hold Beau back with a hand on her shoulder, the monk clenching her fists and edging towards the smirking slaver, nostrils flaring and lips snarled. 

“Some of you at least,” he adds, sneering down at the monk. “We'll see how long that lasts.” 

And he leaves them to reel in the reality of their situation, the door clanging shut behind him.

“We need to get out of here,” Jester says once the footsteps leave and the chamber goes deadly quiet. 

“Don't you think we fucking know that already?” Beau snarls and Yasha hushes her, reigning in the lashing monk. 

“I know, okay! I'm just-- this isn't--” and she doubles over, clutching at the tear in her own gut. It's mostly shallow and not life threatening but Caleb knows it has to hurt all the same. 

“There is not much we can do from the inside. We just have to trust that Shakäste is getting help and that he will return for us any day now..." he reassures the whole of them, but it's half hearted at best and hollow at worst. 

The unspoken doubt in his own words is clear to all of them. 

 

 

\------------- ---------------- ----------------- ----------------- -------

 

 

The next day is much of the same, but this time Lorenzo gives him a choice and he siezes it, taking Nott’s place on the table again. Far more scared of the rattling wet sound starting up in Nott's chest than he is of the knives and things pulled over his skin. 

He drifts in and out for most of it, and he thinks it goes black for a moment, but he wakes up to a hand pressed to his chest, tattoos snaking up and disappearing into a dark cloak and the injuries and fever addling him dulled. Adiran backs off, letting Lorenzo fill the space he vacates.

“I think we lost you for a second there,” and Lorenzo says it so amusedly like he finds it to be the funniest thing that he drove him to unconsciousness. 

Caleb is beyond tired now, like the healing has snapped the energy up from his bones as it went. He wonders how powerful the cleric is when he can feel that nails have regrown onto his fingers and the infection and sickness has been wiped away like it was never there. Other wounds, like the brand, still remain but it's an unnerving thought all the same. 

“Put it back. It's useless to me like this.” 

He's shoved back into the cell, stumbling and falling onto his hands and knees. He blinks, the world tilting and he just catches himself before he can list too far. He wobbles to his feet and trudges his way over to a curled up Nott, resting a hand on her side as he sits.Her ribs are shaky and expand and fall with an alarming unevenness. He knows she'd punch him and yell about how he traded places with her again if she was up and alert, but she's not and that makes unease settle in his gut. 

“Is she okay?” And it's Yasha who asks from across the cell, still burning through her own wounds. 

“She is... alive…” The unspoken part of that is clear. 

“She'll be okay..." Yasha’s voice is so reassuring and sure that he clings onto it, tethering his hope to that horse and draining what he can from it. 

“I know,” he mutters, smoothing the tangled greasy hair out of Nott's face. He'll make sure she makes it out okay.

It's a while before Lorenzo comes back over to the bars and Caleb can see where he's peering in, nose wrinkled in disgust at the smell that has to be permeating the space by now. 

“Harter get the fuck over here.” 

A very short humanoid stumbles over, there's chains clipped to his belt, a pan flute attached to it as well. 

“Clean them up. I'm tired of the smell.” 

The halfing sighs, hand going for the flute. 

It's a strange series of minutes where the halfing frowns through his instrument and cleans every cubic foot of the cell and them with prestidigitation and Caleb is grateful for the lack of filth and grime littering the cell. The halfing spits to the side before leaving, very obviously pissed that he got stuck with clean up duty. He's also a bard so Caleb thinks he should have expected to get the shit end of the stick from the beginning.

 

 

Lorenzo wanders back over once the deed is done, opening the cell with a plan in his eyes. It's something coiled and unknown, waiting beneath the dark. 

He bends down in front of a slumped Yasha, sitting back on his heels and talking low and hushed. It's hard to hear anything they are saying even with the relative quiet. Beau is conked out against the wall, finally having succumbed to the desire to sleep and unable to snarl and bite at Lorenzo as the barbarian nods and he pats her on the head, hoisting her up by the collar and dropping her on her feet. Yasha wavers for a moment, bending over the gut wound before straightening, teeth gnashed and angry. 

Lorenzo follows her out of the cell, the door slamming shut behind them. 

They don't head for the table however, instead making their way to the back where the furnaces crouch and burn. It's difficult to see back there and he gives up after a moment. 

“What do you think that's about?” Fjord asks from the dark. 

“I... I do not know,” he admits, brow furrowed and worried. 

There was something in Lorenzo's eyes that had him on edge. The way the slaver had looked at her made his skin crawl unpleasantly. 

\--------- ------------- ---------------

It's hours, almost half a day’s time before she's brought back down. She's walking, more upright than before, but from where her shirt was already torn he can see the hole in her gut is still a rather deep wound. Other minor things have been wiped away, the bruising and mottled purplish marks almost vanished and cuts and burns fully scabbed over. She doesn't turn to silently snarl or glare at Lorenzo when he locks her back in, she's quiet and reserved waiting until he leaves before she moves fully into the cell. She reclaims her seat next to an anxious and awake Beauregard, putting a small amount of space between them that has the monk frowning, but she seems to respect the distance and doesn't pry.

Water is brought down following her return and they all snatch it with eager fingers. Caleb rouses Nott, helping her drink and giving her over three quarters of his own portion until she's a little more alert and less bleary-eyed. Yasha notices and hands over her share to him, making excuses about not needing it, but there's something far off in her eyes that puts him on edge. 

No one is brave enough or stupid enough to ask how the water came to be.The price feeling oddly high even if none of them can name it yet.


	6. The Deal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **This chapter may contain distressing content.**
> 
> Heavily implied rape/non con (M/F). Semi-explicit and explicit rape/ non-con. (M/M)
> 
> Proceed carefully if you think this might be triggering.

There's a brief moment, a reprieve between exhausted sleep and torture the following day when Fjord finally asks where Yasha went. The barbarian is running her thumb over the lines on her palm, tracing them and avoiding the half-orc' s eyes. Her own mismatched ones are alight with something that bleeds like frustration and there's something else there too, tumultuous and troubled. 

“He just wanted to talk."

“Did he want information?” and the half-orc is nervous now, eyeing her with unease. The shift of his arm towards the pit of his torso isn't lost on Caleb. 

“No, just a conversation.” 

And Caleb knows she's lying, knows it in the way she breathes it out and pulls her knees closer to her chest. 

“What about?” he asks.

“He plans to take a few of us to the coast. Says he has prospects down there." Yasha’s eyes flicker to him as she says it and there's something like an apology in them.

Like she knows something he doesn't. 

“What does he plan to find down there?” Fjord asks. 

“I don't know... He didn't really say.” 

Caleb wonders how much of a conversation they really had up there. He has a feeling it wasn't just talking that was done. Not for the amount of time she was gone. His skin prickles uncomfortably, the ideas lurking just outside his comprehension and he's afraid to tug at them and pull them into the light. 

“It was because of you that we got the water, right?” Caleb finally asks, voicing the one thing none of the others are willing to. 

Yasha nods, jaw tight, letting her sundered mane of hair fall over her face. 

“ _Danke_ ,” And he means every little aspect of it as he looks to a sleeping Nott and then back to her. 

She nods again, and there's something guilty creased along her eyes when she looks at him and his brow furrows, confused by it. She's looking at him like she's marched him up to the chopping block and left him to the slaughter. 

He doesn't understand that look until the ninth day descends on them. 

 

\-------- --------- --------- -----------

 

 

They occasionally receive water following that first day and it's barely enough to chase the pallor out of Nott's skin. But they haven't received food yet and they have been constantly dragged out, worked over, and healed back up in an endless cycle beneath a plethora of different hands at this point until he forgets precisely when or how something was burned or cut into his skin. Even with all of that tearing at him the one thing that has begun to truly eat at him is the hunger. It is devouring and he can see it eating away at his friends’ faces, slowly sallowing their skin, dark circles ringing their eyes and cheeks thinning. 

Nott has been quiet, lethargic, he had given her his portions of water whenever could in hopes it would improve her condition, but she is weak and feeble and she curls around her stomach as it tries to eat itself.He's becoming desperate, he hopes the slavers will bring food and spare them, at the least, slow painful death. But Nott isn't on the selling block, she's a pawn piece to be used against him and the others.

Lorenzo made that abundantly clear. And he thinks he might be forced to watch her starve and out of everything here, that truly terrifies him.

But Lorenzo comes to him on the ninth day of starvation. He bears the prospects of an extended hand and conversation just when Caleb has started to give up completely. 

The slaver smiles as he offers it and Yasha is eyeing him from the other side of the cell and it feels like a warning rife with regret, but he's at his wits end here and he's willing to hear out anything the slaver might offer if it means food. 

The slaver takes him out, leads him towards the back past the furnaces, past where they growl and burn to where they muffle the noise, back to where he saw Yasha go days before. There's a chair, two in fact, and it's quaint and off-putting in the red-lit chamber. Lorenzo claims one and gestures to the other with an eager palm. They're almost knee to knee when they sit and Caleb finds himself shrinking back as Lorenzo leans forward.

“I'm here to make a deal.”

Caleb eyes him, weary and tired, aches and pains scattered across his consciousness.

“Don't look at me like that. I could just let your goblin friend starve to death while I wait out you and the others. Only good dogs get fed around here you know.” He says it so matter of factly it's unnerving. Like he actually thinks of them as his pets in some strange logical way of his. “Now, the deal.”

The slaver steeples his fingers under his chin, leaning back and grinning, eyes glued to his face hunting for his reaction to his next words so keenly Caleb’s terrified of what they might be. “Food for a few days for you and your friends. Maybe some more water if I'm feeling generous and because your other friend did _such_ a good job.”

The way he says the last part is so lecherous and satisfied Caleb blinks, taken aback, looking off to the side. He remembers how Yasha was led up the stairs and then returned hours later, looking less banged up then before, many of her wounds healed over and gone.

But maybe it's because he couldn't see them.

A sinking starts up in his gut as he looks back and sees Lorenzo smirking, like the slaver can see that tenuous connective thread planted in his head now. 

“All of that in exchange for a few hours with me, half a day tops.”

Caleb's thoughts stutter and stumble and then topple over the edge. “I-I.. do not…?” He shakes his head, confused babbling leaving him as he tries to process what was just said.

He thinks Lorenzo means what he's thinking, and with the way Lorenzo is watching him, leering, draped against the chair and head tilted, eyes flitting up and down and over him, has Caleb thinking that Lorenzo _knows_ what's he's thinking. But he doesn't want to say it so precisely in case there's a sliver of doubt somewhere in there. 

“No." Lorenzo leans forward, the chair creaking beneath him. "It's _exactly_ what you think it means.”

Caleb presses back, taken off guard by the unwarranted affirmation, and the way Lorenzo's just grinning at him as he starts to feel the edges of something like panic set in. 

“Your goblin friend gets to live, I get to knock you down a few pegs, you get some food; everyone wins.” The smile that curls his lips is devilish, cruel, the red glow only highlighting it more. “It's a yes or no, take it or leave it type deal and I'm gonna need an answer right about now because we are on a bit of a tight schedule.”

Caleb digs his nails into the bottom of the chair resisting the urge to lunge at the slaver’s throat. Bathed in a white hot fury, imagining Yasha at the mercy of this piece of shit, under this fucking monster, and it's coloring him red.

Lorenzo shakes his head, tutting.“Don't look at me like that, it's not my fault nothing else seems to be working to keep you in line. This is just business, no pleasure, I _swear_.”

Caleb has a feeling Lorenzo’s business is his pleasure. That he derives satisfaction out of breaking people by any means necessary. He just didn't fathom it would come to this.The fear had been there, always in the back of his mind, more for Beau and Jester, even Yasha when a hand lingered too long or eyes roved over them and seemed to pick them apart.

And it had indeed come to fruition for Yasha, but he _never_ fathomed it would be him at the precipice of this. 

“You know I gave her an option,” Lorenzo starts, crossing his arms and leaning back just enough Caleb breathes a fraction easier.“I asked her who I should proposition for this little bargain, told her it was either you or that monk and she didn't even _hesitate_ to throw you under.” 

Now Caleb knows why Yasha kept flitting guilty glances his way, why everytime Lorenzo arrived at the bars she would stare between him and the slaver and grit her teeth. Jaw clenched, like she knew it might be the day the slaver finally came to collect on his bargain. 

He _wants_ to be angry at her. 

He knows he should be. That he should feel some kind of ripping hurt that she would throw him to the wolves so easily. But he knows if it came to a competition between him and Beau she would spare the monk everytime. He thinks that maybe if it was reversed and he had to choose between Nott and Yasha he would spare Nott every time too. 

There's something nauseating about boiling it down so casually in his head. 

“I’m not gonna lie, I was a little disappointed.” Fingers smooth through his hair and they have a whole new context to them that sends his thoughts hitching and stuttering. "But I think I can make do.”

This wasn't something he was supposed to have to deal with. 

He wasn't the one to be taught to move in pairs, to watch his back, or to be careful about where he went at night. All the whispered warnings and advice drifted about him, was always said around him, but never to him, and while he never understood how someone could hurt another person in that way he knew it was a cruel reality that those of a fairer kind had to burden and strive against.

It was never a reality that he thought would be glaring him in the face, it's teeth sharp and gold plated as it offers him a deal he can't refuse but every part of him wants to.

“I can see this is a big step for you, you've got those wheels turning in your head and I can tell you're starting to process the information, but let me tell you, your little friend won't last another two days without food.”

He's quiet and trembling and he knows she won't. Gods does he know she won't, but he _doesn't want this._

“So what's it gonna be? Your pride? Your misguided and guarded virtue? Or your friend? It was an easy decision for the divine blood to make, but what about you?”

And he thinks about Yasha, quiet and more resigned than he remembers her ever being, and he thinks something in him is starting to crack beneath that revelation. 

Lorenzo spreads his arms, leaning back in the chair, his voice rising in ferocity and volume, “I'm curious Mister _Coward_ , what _do_ you value over your friends? 'Cause it's certainly not your body, you've shown that before by choosing to get on the table for them.”

A hand cups the side of his face, snagging his ear and yanking him forward so they're nose to nose. Caleb's breath hitches, chest rising and falling with the rapidity of his thoughts and the fact that he has a name for that look in Lorenzo’s eyes now.

He thinks it's hunger. 

“Is it your mind then, huh? Or maybe it's your ego? Is that what it is? You don't want to risk it cracking under the pressure? Would being dominated really crush you that much? I know you pathetic humans value things so strangely, but do you think it would make you less of a man? Or, oh, maybe it'd be _more_ if it was in exchange for something as virtuous as your friend’s life, huh?”

Lorenzo releases him and he falls back against the chair, curling his knees to his chest and hoping that the less the slaver sees of him the more he might forget about this deal in the first place.

It doesn't work and those dark eyes only follow him more closely. 

The slaver answers none of the questions and Caleb has no answers for them either. He just knows he doesn't want to do this. Ever. Never in his entire existence did he ever think he would be put into a position that he would want to reverse more than this entire scenario.

In this moment-- _only_ in this single instance as he stares wide-eyed and trembling at this man who just made him an offer he can't rightfully refuse, but would rather never fathom. His parents death comes to mind and he wonders, briefly, if this shitty hand is his karma for all of that. And for all his self loathing and the loathsome self deprecating thoughts he hides himself in, for a fractious moment, he doesn't think he deserves _this._

And he wants to erase it. _Selfishly_. As he's forced to look at the shine of Lorenzo's teeth, his cracked lips, ragged nails, rough skin, the faded pathworks of tattoos that disappear beneath piece mail armor; all the putrid facets of this man who just might touch him, caress him-- _fuck_ him if he says yes here. Maybe-- as he tries not to imagine whether the slaver would even grant him the disturbing luxury of a bed or just the ground-- he wants to erase this more than his parents deaths, and that sends something caustic and terrible biting up his throat at the terrible, selfish realization. He wants to erase it for Yasha, for himself, and for all the irrevocable hurts already stamped into his friends skin. He wants to erase Lorenzo from existence entirely so that this would never be a decision for him to have to make in the first place. 

He eyes the cracked, grinning lips and sharp teeth that have dogged and chased him from day one and he wonders when exactly the idea was planted in Lorenzo’s head. He wonders if it had always been there. Festering since the moment he tried to crawl up the steps and away from this hell. He asks himself what put the idea there, why him, why Yasha, if it was something he did, something he said, something he could have changed about himself to avoid this kind of bargain in the first place.

He wonders if it was ever avoidable in the first place. 

Lorenzo snaps his fingers in front of his face and he flinches back, breath heavy, eyes flicking frantically across the other's form and back up to the uncaring eyes

“Come on, tick tock, buckaroo, we're running out of time and your deals about to expire with your friend in there. If you're worried about them finding out about what you did in exchange for the food don't worry, I can be _very_ discreet.”

Caleb has a feeling his version of discreet and Lorenzo’s is very different.

And he knows it won't matter.

They'll see it on him, in the way he walks and talks and functions like a person on strings, someone who's there but not.He's seen it once before, a friend of his mother's, caught up in a bad situation in a seedier part of town, and, afraid of her own husband's wrath, she fled to theirs. There was something missing in her eyes, the way she looked at him, through him, like she was somewhere else entirely, but also just vacant. Like someone had reached in and hollowed her out and left the husk behind to walk and talk and rot. And at the time he hadn't known what had happened, hadn't fathomed it, and by the time he did know she was better, livelier, more alert. But there was always something a bit stilted, a bit off if you looked in the right places and the idea that the decision he makes here will have everlasting consequences no matter the one he chooses sends him reeling. 

He either watches his friend die or he dies in his own way.

He looks at Lorenzo, resigned, face blank, but eyes wild with the things he fears. Sagging into the chair, spiritless and lost and feeling for all the world like he's seventeen again and watching his childhood burn to the ground. The slaver smile splits wider, eyes dark and hungry before Caleb can even voice his decision.The slaver already knows a defeated man when he sees one.

“I will..." He tries not to choke on the words but it's hard, impossible nearly as he watches the curl of Lorenzo's fingers and knows that he'll just let them touch him-- let him do whatever it takes to make sure Nott survives this-- That they thay all survive this-- "I will take the deal...”

He doesn't have to look up from where he's ducked his head to know Lorenzo is smiling, eager and sharp, and every ounce the predator here. Not when fingers curl over the back of his neck, caress over the nape of him, and he trembles under their touch, nausea and bile clawing their way up his throat, before they finally hook into the collar and pull him to his feet.

 

 

\------- ---------- ----------- ------------- ----------

 

 

 

He's led up the stairs and through the boughs of the Sour Nest.

The knowledge of what he's agreed to not really sticking just yet.Its there, it's hanging, caught on a thread and slowly unraveling into clarity the closer he gets to his final destination. The unease starts to set in when the door is opened and there's a bed and Lorenzo steps aside, gesturing him in, holding the door aloft. 

Lorenzo makes him walk in first, of his own volition, and there's something so unbelievably upsetting about it that he would rather be tossed down the stairs and brained against the steps then pass through that threshold. 

It makes him feel like he's here voluntarily, as if he wants any part of this.

And the way the other slavers had jeered and stared from the crevices of their stronghold, eyes on the collar around his neck and leering at the way Lorenzo dwarfed him from behind, is all too telling of how often this happens. It's a show to them, a parade, and they know where it ends and he doesn't, or he does, but he would rather never know, and now he's frozen at the edge of it, staring at an unkempt bed.

The sheets are the nicest thing he's seen in quite some time and there's a hysterical burbling laugh caught at the back of his throat that he's about to get raped on some of the finest sheets he'll ever lay on in his life. It makes him want to curl up and wither into the floorboards, it makes him want the shadows to leap out and drag him away to be eaten, bloody and messy and violent but still merciful, because at the end he will at least be dead, truly and totally.

He will not have such luxury here.

And they're a bloody, red satin; glossy and shiny and glaring back at him like blood cascading over the mattress and spilling onto the floor and he wants to crumple at the sight of them because he knows what comes next. He made this deal knowing the end goal, but how could he ever prepare for it?

He's a rumpled and filthy man, scruffy and littered in scars, smeared in dirt and sweat and he doesn't even have the parts that he was told should make him wary of things like this, of men like this. But Lorenzo isn't a man, he's a creature, a monster, something that lurks in the dark and doesn't follow society's rules and dines on human flesh like it's accepted.

And Caleb knows it's not about the act, but the power for him, knows it in the way the slaver steps up behind him, finger hooking in the remains of his shirt and pulling, watching his face, his eyes, relishing in the way he crumbles with each ripping stitch.

And he would be foolish, stupid even, to say he wasn't terrified by all of it.

Naive to think that his anger would win out in this situation when his shirt is finally ripped from him and and he doesn't know how to name the feeling in his stomach but he thinks it's most definitely dread.He's turned around, a hand placed on his naked chest, rag-doll and limp as the back of his knees hit the mattress and he falls backwards onto a mess of shiny bleeding red.

There's no point in the theatrics, in the fighting and spitting, or clawing at the inevitable. He agreed to this in exchange for something, he had said yes and he said it so final and so sure in that moment, but now he's not so sure as those hands tear the last barriers of decency from him and toss the sundered pieces onto the floor like they're nothing.

There's something wet at the corners of his eyes and he tries to beat it back, to hold it in, tells himself he won't let it show that's he beyond terrified at this point, naked and trapped and alone beneath the devil himself.

Each piece of armor Lorenzo removes only makes the reality of the situation hit harder. The more cracked, leathery skin that's revealed, the more it brushes against his own unimpeded and harsh, the moment that not even a stitch lays between them and unwanted flesh lays fully across his own is the exact second he realizes what being truly powerless feels like.

His wrists are pinned above him, caught in fingers that while before scared and hurt him in the ways they inflicted and tore out their pain, did not feel like this. 

Did not feel like they were claiming and marking and taking something from him.

 

And the worst part is the slaver doesn't even talk.

 

He says nothing.

Gives no commands, utters no words or expletives, drawls none of his usual snark or arrogant remarks.

He's just quiet.

So quiet that every sound that is made is utterly shattering and it's so much worse this way.

He wishes he would say something so that he can latch onto anything else besides the hands running down his sides and fanning across his ribs. He yearns for any other stimulus to latch onto, anything to detach himself from the searching fingers tracing along his scars and down, dipping into the grooves they put there themselves.

It's reverent and gentle and not how he imagined this would ever be. And a putrid, disgusting part of him wants it to be brutal so there's no denying it for what it is, but this is a confusing, cross wiring onslaught of unwanted stimuli that has heat skittering across his skin and gathering behind his eyes to trail down his face.

Thumbs brush them away, the low rumbling of a bassy laugh an earthquake that engulfs him as hands cup his face and he's suddenly looking into deadened obsidian.

There's no mercy there just an endless void and a promise of a hurt so primal and ancient that it's timeless and ageless and all devouring as a hand trails low and lower still and---

It's hard to remember things linearly after that.

It's a patchwork quilt of sensations all strung together with the fact that he never wanted this.

It's ragged nails dragging across the tender skin of his hips. A heavy, oppressive heat curled over his whole front, smothering him, crushing him and searing him. It's the unmistakable, unexplainable feeling of being irreversibly marked in every way, inside and out, of being ripped open and exposed. It's cold lips trailing over heated skin and taught muscle and teeth ripping into his neck, his shoulder, his hip, chewing and eating and hungrily feasting on his protests. It's the smell of blood and the nauseating scent of sweat and iron and rot being spilled into every crevice until that's all he is. It's things pressed to his lips, to his teeth, and in his mouth, tearing and spilling and searching. 

It's knowing a pain so intimate, so unwelcome that he shatters beneath it. It's forgetting what it was like before that moment, before everything was seized and vanquished. It's his wrists trapped beneath bruising fists and sheets tangled around his ankles.

It's knowing that he lets it happen again.

Differently, but the same.

An impossible chilled heat crushed along his back. Digits spanned across his skull, choking, pulling, yanking what they want from him again and again. Pressed against the whole of him and imprinting all of it into his flesh with every waft of hot air grunted against his neck. Those same, leather cracked palms that drove a glaive into Mollymauk’s heart splitting him open and devouring what they please from the things that spill out.

 

And it's when it's finally over, when the air cools against him and the weight is finally gone, but stuck inside him, coiled around every raw part of himself, that he comes back to awareness and clarity.

 

 

He is alone.

 

 

 

The collar around his throat is so much heavier than it ever was before. Bruises litter his skin, fingerprints etched into the parts of himself he wants to erase and he stares at the blossoms of purple, uncomprehendingly, praying that the things dancing in his head didn't happen, but knowing that the physical evidence is damning.

It's mapped out on his skin, everything that was ever done.

It's as undeniable as the scars from so long ago and he doesn't know what he's supposed to do now that's it over. There's no rule book, no guidelines or tome that he's ever read that told him how to handle this. He thinks he's supposed to cry maybe, but there's just this gaping void where his chest should be and he thinks maybe that's where his soul should be too, but he doesn't know anymore.

 

There's a plate of food at the foot of the bed like an offering.

 

He stares at it, curled against the headboard, eyes flicking between the door and the platter, afraid to move past what he already has. Afraid to catch the glimpses of the slowly deepening appearance of hand prints on his thighs, the bloodied teeth marks sunk into the parts of himself that should never wear them, and the things dried to his skin that should never be there.

He waits for him to return.

He wants to pull the sheets around him, wants to hide against the growing shadows in the room. And everything tells him to do it, to shield himself, to gather the clothes he knows are scattered in ruins along the floor and do something other than wait. But he finds himself staring at the food and dancing over the dark splatters beside it, unmoving. Consumed by a physical hunger, but repulsed by a nausea that grows from the muck he knows is festering there.

Footsteps on the stairs send his eyes tumbling back to the door, the rattle of it a death knell before the knob turns and the barrier swings wide.

He pauses in the doorway and Caleb watches him, unblinking, eyes burning, an animalistic need to keep him in sight driving him to not falter. The flash of gold teeth sends his thoughts skittering off course, derailing as the torn flesh on his neck flares.

“Got your friends all fed like I promised.”

The door shuts with a click that has the hair raising on the back of his neck, the collar tight where it rests along his collar bones.

“Not even a ‘prove it to me’ or a ‘show me’ from you?” Caleb watches him smirk, smug and sure. “Guess we're finally learning.”

The slaver tromps closer and he presses himself back against the wood, a low sound leaving his throat when a hand brushes through his hair and a whole slew of sensations sprout forth from the dragging motion, sending his chest heaving and ragged.

“All it took was a careful touch, huh?”

The slaver is fully dressed now, but it doesn't stop Caleb from trying to pull away, wary and unsure of what he still has planned.

“Maybe I should do this for all of you if it'll shut you all up for once.”

There's a flicker of something.

Like flint sparking in the back of his head.

There's the face of a smiling goblin girl, happy and nervous, if not a bit inebriated, and she's looking up to him, offering him a flower and she's braiding it into his hair and he imagines her crushed beneath the slaver in front of him, crying and choking, and it sends his blood _roiling_.

Anger snaps up the void inside him.

He turns a defiant glare towards Lorenzo, mustered up despite the phantom fingers crawling across him and the real ones spread along his scalp.

His mouth curls into a grin and Caleb shrinks from it and the blood, _his blood_ , still caught between them.

“Ah, ah, ah,” He wags a finger and the hand slides from his hair down to his jaw, a thumb swiping over his lips, “There it is again. I almost missed it for a second, that _fire_. Even _if_ a complacent you is far easier to work with. Much more, how should I say, _malleable_?”

Nails dip into the searing tears along the junction of his neck as he says it, moving to trail blood along his heaving rib cage and chest.

His thoughts start to stutter, the anger disappearing as he starts to drift and lose his stable footing amongst the encroaching onslaught of mounting terror that is seeping in like a relentless tide.

“Do we need another lesson?”

Caleb quakes, lips locked tight, staring at the leather and the hooks and straps that comprise Lorenzo’s reclaimed armor, uncomprehending as a high whine fills his ears.

“I thought so.” 

He would do anything to leave this room.

Anything to no longer see the impossibly dark stains on the rumpled sheets or the crumples of torn garments at the side of the bed. He would trade his soul, forfeit his body again if it meant never returning to this room, never having to see Lorenzo and have those hands on his skin.

But he's powerless.

He has nothing to trade and everything to lose.

His friends lives lorded over him the first time, their well being worth more than his body and mind and ego. And even in the wake of the aftermath he still stands by his decision. Even though it feels like he's barely cobbled together, like shattered stained glass shoved back in all the wrong ways, warped and dirtied with fingerprints and blood coating the glass.

“Let's get you back in your cell." A hand grips the back of his neck, covering the collar and guiding him to stand on legs that just barely do their job.

He quakes, swarmed with the memory of a hand covering the back of his neck and shoving him down, suffocating him into the sheets now mere feet away from his trembling knees.

“We have a big day tomorrow. We hit the road for the Menagerie Coast and I can't have you absolutely dead on your feet and looking like shit.”

Something is pressed to his lips and its just cold glass, but he still reels from it, flashes of metal and hooked thumbs and flesh flitting across and in them and down his throat.

“Easy there, just a potion. Can't afford to have a prized horse looking like it's been broken in before I sell it, you understand?”

Caleb nods absently, wanting the hand cupping the back of his skull gone or burnt to ash so badly he drinks the liquid, with only the word of the slaver on what it is. The familiar burn not unpleasant as it sweeps away the aches, brushes away the unspeakable things laid into his skin.

He looks down to see the faint impression of unseen hands circling his wrists and watches the marks fade to scars and pink scabs, joining ranks with the rest of the dull array across his skin.

It almost looks like nothing happened and he doesn't know if that's worse, or better, or neither.

Cloth is shoved into his hands and he fumbles with it until eventually it slips to the ground, his fingers numb and shaking where the things once were. Lorenzo sighs, the hand finally leaving where it had rested against his collar. Caleb watches the slaver move to stand by the door and lean against the wall, arms crossed and seeming to mercifully give him space to think, but it's really not enough. 

The smell of the room is still suffocating, heady and sweat filled and laced with blood and salt.

“If I knew you were gonna turn into such a fucking mess I might've rethought my decision.” The slaver mutters along his peripheral, the words registering, but losing meaning as Caleb stares at the plain cotton shirt. It's a deep wine red that swims in his vision and mingles with the sheets in his perepherial. 

He carefully crouches, keeping the slaver in his sights the whole time, wary to turn his back to him now that he's been given the choice. He snatches up the clothes, pulling them on quickly, grateful for any barrier between him and the other no matter how thin.

Lorenzo rolls his eyes and Caleb feels the beginnings of true anger ignite with that.The slaver acts like he hadn't just forced him to make a decision he would never make of his own volition just so he and his cellmates could eat.

He hadn't even touched a lick of the food presented to him either. His stomach so filled to the brim with vomit and bile and things that make him crawl and itch with the need to claw it out.

He wants to bathe, he wants to slip out of his skin forever and never go back. The things imprinted into it may be erased by a potion, but he still knows where they should be. Knows exactly where the spanning, large, blue-black hand prints should color his hips or circle his thighs. Knows that something inside him should burn and stab with each step, but it's gone, healed up and stitched shut like it never happened.

Even then, with the evidence snapped out of existence he still wants to drown himself in water and never crawl back out if it means knowing what this feels like.

And the worst part is with every interaction, every little brush and tick and motion Lorenzo makes, something new, something that in the moment he had forgotten or erased or repressed so fully to guard himself, breaks free and snaps him back to it in an instant.

A new thing to fear, a new wariness, a new smell to run from, or a certain touch to shy from. It just keeps building and shifting and deepening the longer he's forced to stand in this room and be near the slaver himself.

 

It doesn't go away when they exit either.

 

The other slavers leer at him from their adjacent living quarters, something knowing in their eyes, their lips parted and smiles sharp like they heard every cry and whimper and tearing shout that even he can't remember letting out.

He's marched down, past the kitchen, past the dining area and the halls and every single person he passes looks him over, and somehow they know. Even with the marks gone, fully clothed, Caleb feels like they can just see it written across his skin.

The fact that he sold himself for a meal he didn't even eat.

He keeps his head bowed, eyes on the stone of the steps as they descend, back down into a familiar setting, one that he wishes he had never left now.

Lorenzo is behind him, far too close still, the edges of his breath just ghosting over his neck and Caleb resists the urge to scurry the rest of the way to the cell and plant his back to the bars so the slaver can't occupy the space there.

He has to endure the strange parade march, each second agony, his back impossibly tense as the feeling of being crushed plays over and over and over and---

And then finally they are there and Lorenzo is opening the doors and Caleb could sob he's so relieved that there will be a wrought iron cage between him and the slaver even if that slaver holds the key.

He slips inside quietly, the distant torch casting a dim light across the cell’s familiar faces and he's careful not to meet their eyes.

He's sure they'll see the ruins in them. 

That they'll know the deal he made with the devil and he doesn't want them to feel guilty for it like he knows they would be and he doesn't want to see pity in their eyes.

The door to the cell slams shut and all the tension bleeds from him as the footsteps fade away.

He curls into a vacant corner, chin propped on his knees, palms flat against the stone, picking at the grooves in them.

There's a good, long, moment of silence.

“Caleb?”

He doesn't look up. He doesn't know what to say to assuage them, to make them stop looking, but he wants them to, to stop inspecting every curled inch of him. 

There's whispering around him, hushed voices, getting heated for a moment before dying again. He ignores them, turning to pick at a string on the new pants he's wearing. 

And he's sure it's not lost on them that they are indeed new.

“Have you eaten yet?”

It's the voice again.

He blinks and suddenly there's someone in front of him and maybe more time passed between the blink then he thought because the face he looks up to is concerned and drawn and green.

“Caleb?” And it's shakier than before, quiet.

Something brushes his hair and he jerks back against the stone.

“Sorry...” the voice whispers, sitting down in front of him now, a hand sliding into his own and that's a safe territory he thinks, as long as it doesn't touch his wrist.

A quiet, smothered part of him knows he made the right call as the smaller hand rests, alive and well, in his own.

Hardtack, flaky and solid is pushed into his other hand and on automatic he slips it towards his mouth, hunger gnawing at him now that the immediate threat has vanished. But, the second it brushes his lips he has to rethink his strategy, the urge to vomit overwhelming, a phantom weight against them causing him to tear it into small chunks and slip them in carefully to mule over slowly.

The pieces, small as they are, still sit heavy in his stomach, thoughts of what else churns in there making him ill.

“Caleb, are you okay?” 

The other voices quickly hush and squabble over that one, loud and out of place in the quiet of the cell.

He tilts his head back against the wall, looking up at the ceiling, glancing over the small details, grounding himself in them.

“I am... fine.”

It's the first words he's spoken since it all happened and it's strange to think of it like that. Like how it was the first time he ate since it happened, or the first time he wore clothes since it happened, or walked, or drank, or breathed, or cried.

He wonders if that's how it'll start to be broken down in his head.

The things that came before and after. 

If he focuses too much on it, on the things crawling under his skin, against him, _in him_ it makes his eyes prickle involuntarily and stomach hurt, so instead he tries to focus on sleep, tries to avoid whatever fallout is brewing there.

He drifts for a bit, trying to catch that slumbering unconsciousness he can feel at the edges of him, but the bickering voices keep bringing him back. Along with the hands on the back of his neck, across his shoulder blades, and spread against his rib cage that, when he jerks awake, suddenly vanish.

“---Okay, yeah, he's clearly not o-fucking-kay but what can we do about it right now?”

“I don't know, I can try to heal him?”

“With what powers? There's that fucking ward, we've got these damn collars, and your ‘Traveler’ ain't talking to you.”

“You don't know that! Maybe he's just waiting for an opportunity like this where I can _really_ help someone or something, you know?”

“I don't think your imaginary friend can get past the ward if my powers can't, no offense Jester.”

“Can you all stop, he's trying to sleep.”

The voices go quiet and he drifts a bit more.

More still whisper in the dark, but he's half listening, half warding off whatever is lurking about his subconsciousness.

“Where do you think he went with him?”

“I don't know… but it's mighty convenient we got food after he got taken up stairs.”

“You don't think he bargained for us or something do you? Like with Yasha and the water?”

“I- I don't honestly know.”

 

They go quiet again.

 

He says nothing.

 

He thinks he falls asleep at some point but his dreams are filled with calloused hands and shining teeth and a cold, heated flesh that pulls him apart again and again and again and---

 

 

\-------


	7. Nightmares

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Same warnings as last chapter.

His dreams are plagued with things that might be memories but they twist and turn like nightmares. 

 

_He's laid out on a bed of satin that sticks and clings to the sweat and blood and incomprehensible things on him._

_And there's something next to him._

_It's large and the frame buckles towards it and he's tensed on the edge of the mattress, as far away as he can be._

_It shifts and he goes to pull away but it's claws close around him and he's falling towards that animalistic musk and he tries not to gag as he crashes into a leathery hide. It's pressed up behind him and he tries not to think about the things touching him. He can feel himself spiraling and losing focus on the barren wastes of red in front of his nose and underneath his cheek._

_He doesn't fight it when the thing moves him, limp and pliable, knowing that any insurgency will result in more pain, more suffering on his part._

_He's turned so he's facing it now and those pools of slick obsidian tear across him, relishing in it's handiwork._

_He watches Lorenzo’s face split into a satisfied grin and he doesn't know what else to do other than lay there and quietly fall apart beneath it._

_Fingers toy with the amulet that sits at the pit of his neck and Caleb remembers tucking it underneath the collar to try and hide it, knowing that if he found it he would take it away too._

_He doesn't want to think about why it came loose._

_There's a tug on it and for the first time since he arrived in this room he struggles._

_He doesn't know if it's the whining distressed sound he makes or the way he writhes and claws uselessly at the hands around the leather chord, but Lorenzo stops, eyes narrowed and watching._

_Caleb’s chest is on fire and he shrinks back and away, heels shifting uselessly against the sliding sheets when Lorenzo rises and plants himself over him and it's too much, too soon. Those hands, the same ones that tore him apart and open, fist into the sheets to each side of his head and the slaver leans down until hot breath wafts over his face._

_Caleb turns away from it, hiding his gaze into the wall, hands trembling where they've curled around the amulet._

_“What will you do to keep it?”_

_It's the first time he's heard that voice since they entered this room and he's buckling beneath the weight across his front, the pain still on him and inside him, and the prospect of another damning bargain held out to him._

_He already sold his soul once._

_He doesn't know if he can do it again._

_“I--” He stutters, choking on the words, looking everywhere but the face looming over his, “I don't--”_

_“I'm sure you can think of something,” The slaver rumbles and his teeth and lips are far too close to his ear._

_He's shaking apart, the hips pressed down across his own still slick with something and he's afraid to look between them and see blood._

_He can't do that again._

_He doesn't know how he survived the first time and a part of him knows he didn't._

_That something in him died alongside the bruises and the blood and the ruin._

_“How much does it mean to you?”_

_It means not being found until he is ready._

_It means avoiding the attention of someone that he would like to see dead._

_It means being able to hide from his past until he can bend it to his will._

_It means making his mother and father proud, alive and whole._

_It means _everything_._

_“What are you willing to give?”_

_He can feel the amulet biting into his skin of his palms, the harsher edges digging in and reminding him that he has to keep it no matter what._

_Even if it means selling every part of himself to do so._

_“...everything.”_

_Lorenzo chuckles and it's a rumbling contented growl that embeds itself in Caleb's chest and squeezes around his lungs._

_“Good.”_

_Fingers tangle in his hair and he stops thinking after that._

__

 

He shoots up, hands flying to his neck and scrabbling for the amulet. And for a moment he can only find the collar and he can feel his hands start to go numb with dread. When his fingers finally close around it he chokes on a sob that thankfully manifests as a hacking surprised cough. Someone scrambles up next to him and they rub circles into his back as he chokes on air. Their hand is far too small to be mistaken for anyone else's. 

The fit finally subsides and he sags forward, ribs aching.

“Caleb?”

He blinks confused for a moment over why he can't see an endless sea of shining red or weathered and calloused skin. It takes him a few alarming seconds to remember he isn't there anymore. 

He shifts, sliding away from the comforting hand and pressing his back fully against the wall, relishing in the solid security of it. 

“Are you okay?” 

And there it is again.

That same probing question that bites against his skin and reminds him that no, no he really isn't and that everyone else can see it as well.

“Ja, I am fine,” he bites it out a little more aggressively than he needs to, but he's wrung out and still terribly awfully tired and he doesn't want to think about it because every moment he dwells on it the more he remembers. The more things come crawling from the blackened oozing stain smeared across his memory. 

“Okay…” and he can see in the way Nott worries at her hands that she wants to say more. 

Caleb leans against the wall, turning away from her and away from her searching worried eyes, resting his temple against the cool stone and listening to the murmuring quiet shift around him.

“You said some things while you were sleeping…”

He tenses, hands spasming where they've locked around his own ankles, knees pulled as tight to his chest as they can be. He can almost feel the rest of their eyes burning into the back of his neck as they watch the exchange. 

“What did I say?” he whispers, barely above a breath.

There's a worrying pause. 

“Not much, a-- a few words maybe, they were hard to understand and I-- I didn't catch a lot of them,” she rushes out.

And he can tell she's lying. She was never very good at it. Her voice always became rushed and hurried, cracking more than it already does.

“You said ‘no’,” Fjord cuts in, blunt and plain and Caleb hunches into himself even more, “that one was _crystal_ clear.” 

He can tell the half-orc is worried, scared even, and that's not a good thing. For all that he knows about the half-orc the man isn't afraid to pry a little, say all the right things that might unhinge that sealed box and let something he wants to know come tumbling out. 

“Just a nightmare," he lies, ducking his head, avoiding their eyes. 

“About what?” Fjord continues, probing as Caleb feared he would.

“Does it matter?” He retorts defensively, shoulders tensing. There's something twisting in that hollowed pit in his chest, coiling and rearing back. 

“I mean, yeah... kind of.” 

Caleb grits his teeth.

“Was it something chasing you? I have lots of nightmares like those, but the Traveler said to just face the thing chasing me and it'll go away. Have you tried that, yet?”

He almost laughs at the idea.

“I don't think it was that kind of dream, Jester..." Yasha says and Caleb knows if he looks at her he'll see something like understanding in her eyes matched by a prism of guilt and he doesn't know what to do with that.

Surprisingly it's Beau who comes to his rescue.

“Oi, wizard boy, you still hungry? Cause if not I'm gonna eat the rest of this shit.” 

She's waving the last bits of the bread they'd been given in the air, and he can see in the tight look on her face that she thinks she knows what he dreamed about. That she's trying to distract the others from probing at it too much. He's never been more grateful to tell someone about how he murdered his family than he is right now, even if she couldn't be more off about what's stalking around in his head. 

He nods, unfurling from where he's hidden himself and even though he knows there's nothing on his skin it still feels like the others can see the missing bruises and teeth marks. He barely resists the urge to fold back into himself. He misses his scarf, he misses his coat, and he wants them back so he can hide everything beneath them. He misses his cat, misses the comforting weight of the feline draped over his neck and purring, now all he has is a sinister rumble caught in his ear and the feeling of teeth along his throat. 

She tosses him a few pieces and nods when he finally meets her eyes, he quickly looks away, narrowly missing the troubled frown that takes root there. With the subject thankfully avoided he tries to steer them into safer waters, tries to distract them and himself from the trembling wracking his fingers. 

“How long was I out?” 

It's a safe topic and one he needs to know about.

He can't remember where the sun is and it's terrifying to think he's lost it's position. There's a yawning chunk of indeterminable time between going up those stairs and waking back up in the folds of a nightmare that felt so real he knows it has to be a memory. 

“Couple hours maybe,” Beau admits, picking at the blood under her fingernails, voice laced with a disquieting concern that turns his gut. 

He still has time to gather himself before Lorenzo is back then. Time to fit the pieces back together and pretend like nothing happened. 

“Any new developments up top?” Fjord cuts in and it’s nearly clipped, like he knows they are working against him. 

And even though it isn't deliberately malicious he can tell the half-orc is still searching for something by the way his eyes watch every tick and shift Caleb makes. 

“No.” 

“Nothing? No changes to their plans? No new people we should know about? Anything?” the half orc almost sounds skeptical and there's something mounting in his voice that Caleb can't place. 

“ _There was nothing_ ,” he grits it out, blistering, hackles raising against the continued questioning. He wishes they would leave it well enough alone so that he can leave it alone to fester and die just under his skin. Forgotten to eat at him like he has with everything else. 

“Fjord,” Jester tugs at the half-orc’s arm and for all her put-on, purposeful obliviousness in other situations even she can tell things are starting to get heated. 

“Are you sure because it sure as fuck feels like you're hiding something,” And there it is, that worry from before has started to bleed into suspicion and Caleb was stupid to forget that these people still, for the weeks they've been together, barely know him and what he's willing to do. 

He can see how Fjord might think he's sold them out or shared a little too much to save his own skin. He knows the half-orc has his own reasons to fear someone with a loose mouth, the orb somewhere in his torso and the strange glowing sword both pretty good reasons to be wary of a snitch.

He almost doesn't blame him for it. 

But that doesn't stop him from latching onto the first thing he's been able to direct this building frustration at and he dumps oil onto that low smoldering flame with everything he has left.

“Does it?” Caleb bites back, trembling fists curling at his side. He knows he should stop, that he should just back down and let it be, but he can't now that he's started.

He did this for _them_ , he traded himself away so they could eat and he's met with an interrogation, and he wants to slam his fists into the wall because he can't tell them what he gave for it. They can never know and he will never let it leave his lips where it can become real and tangible. There's so many things crashing around inside him and he wants to spill them out in a heap of twisted anger and barbed words and Fjord's unknowingly given him the perfect outlet. 

“Yeah, it kind of fucking does.” He can tell in the way Ford's own lip has lifted and the way stress and anger, and everything they've been forced to endure, is snapping and writhing in his eyes that the half-orc is clutching onto that thread of irrational anger. That he's pulling at it too, uncaring as it unravels because at least it's better than the constant, sickening worry. 

Caleb stands up, wobbling on his feet for a moment before planting them, staring down the half-orc who gets to his own across the cell. Nott is tugging at his leg and he can see Jester trying to pull Fjord back now, but the half-orc slips out of her grip and stalks towards him. 

“You know I was worried at first, but now, I don't know if I should be. How the fuck do I know you haven't thrown your lot in with them, huh? You come back in here with new clothes and healed up to brand spanking new and what are we supposed to think?” 

He feels sick. 

Something poisonous and putrid crawling up the sides of him at the half orc's words.

Is that what they think of him? That he would betray them so easily in exchange for things so paltry and unrewarding. There’s something lodged in his throat and he thinks it's a frustrated yell, but he can't let it free, it's twisted and tethered back by the crumbling parts of him trying to maintain some semblance of control. He feels like he's being backed into a corner and he wants to spit and snarl at them, a feral, vicious need to fight back seizing him. Fight and struggle where he couldn't upstairs. 

He wants them to stop looking, he wants them to stop spinning those gears and picking him apart and figuring out every little thing in his head. 

“Fjord, stop,” It's Yasha this time, she's leveraging herself to her feet, wincing, and clutching at the thing still torn through her gut. 

Caleb tries not to look at her, he doesn't want to see the things reflected there and he's shaking and he can't tell if it's anger or fear or everything in between and Fjord' s just glaring at him, eyes narrowed and far too close for his nerves to handle. Nott curls her fingers around his wrist and he jerks away from her, taking a halting step towards Fjord, hands balled into fists. 

“I do not know Fjord, what are you _supposed_ to think?” 

The half-orc grits his teeth, visibly perturbed by his snarled words, but Caleb can't stop now that he's started. He wants to hit something, wants to feel something cave beneath his knuckles, and it's illogical and irrational, but he wants to strangle every ounce of control from this situation until it patches up all the things clattering around inside him. 

“Guys stop fucking fighting! We deal with enough of this shit from them already!” Beau shouts, springing up as well and heading over to stand between them. 

She doesn't make it, Fjord slams him into the wall before she can get there, pinning his shoulders against unyielding stone and Caleb’s thoughts go reeling off course. He tries to rip the hands off, the image in front of him transposed by another and that nasty, acidic anger siphons out of him. 

There's a litany of shouting and protests, everyone in the cell leaping forward at once, even Caduceus and Keg, the most silent of them, step forward, brows creased. 

“Fjord take your fucking hands off of him or I swear to god I'll--” Nott snarls, shoving at the half-orc, but he doesn't budge. 

And Caleb drowns, the surface lost to him, and he doesn't even remember what they were fighting about anymore. All he wants is for the hands to get off of him and he pries at them, a small pathetic sound leaving him when they don't budge that he can't even bite back this time. 

Fjord seems to finally notice what's happening and he backs off, hands up and eyes wide, like he can't believe he did it in the first place. 

Caleb collapses, gasping and shuddering, trying to keep the figures in front of him from warping and shifting about messily. 

“What the _fuck_ , Fjord?” Beau snarls, shoving the half orc away and stepping between them now. 

“I didn't mean-- I didn't think--I--” Fjord stutters and Caleb watches the half orc look from his hands to him, brow lined with an apology. 

“Why would you think Caleb would do that to us? He wouldn't do that to us. He wouldn't.” Jester is shaking her head, tail curled close to her ankle, eyes shining. 

Someone kneels in front of him, gently uncurling his hands from where he's wrapped them around his own throat. They are careful not to touch his wrists, placing them next to him to lay flat against cool stone. He sees pink hair, but doesn't register it's Caduceus until the firbolg cups his face, his hands soft with a layer of fur and unmistakable as just that. The firbolg takes a moment and Caleb can feel his heart finally starting to stutter and slow now that there's something grounding him, something that is unmistakable and tangibly not the thing that lurks upstairs. The firbolg nods once he finds whatever he's been looking for and backs off. 

Nott inserts herself into the space and he can feel her frantically looking him over in his periphery, but he's locked onto the way Yasha has dragged Fjord to the corner of the cell, her large hand keeping him steady as she whispers something to him. Beau is still standing in the widened space between him and Fjord, eyes darting to the little meeting the barbarian and half-orc are having and back to him, something akin to worry in her eyes. Keg is visibly confused, looking between all of them, unsure if she should still be prepared to break apart a fight or if she should go back to her corner. Jester is staring at the ground, uncharacteristically wringing her hands, tail still low and rigid. 

Caleb knocks his head back into the wall, huffing out a breath and trying to press the cracked parts of his outer appearance back together while he can. Tries to ignore the raw and bloodied churned up parts held behind it when Fjord walks over, head bowed and hands clenching at his sides.

“Sorry about that.” 

He's not sure what the half-orc is apologising for. 

He was within his reason to be suspicious and angry when Caleb only answered with bribes and barbs. He doesn't blame him, he might have done the same if someone came back down acting all kinds of guarded and guilty. 

Caleb scrapes up the parts of himself he can find and pulls it on like a mask. It makes it easier when he finally looks up and meets Fjord's eyes, makes the words that fall out easier too, even if they are rife with lies and half truths. 

“It's... fine... We are all a bit strung out to shit…,” Caleb laughs hollowly, cynical and dry and a little bit chipped. “It was not your fault.” 

Somehow it feels like he's talking and not talking, like his mouth knows what to say and does it before his brain can catch up. It's muddled and gray and the apologetic smile the half orc gives him feels distant and meaningless to him even in it's sincerity. 

“Doesn't mean I still don't feel like the biggest asshole in the world right now.” 

“It is---” He wants to say fine again, but he can feel it get caught somewhere halfway out. 

Because it isn't.

None of it is. 

And he's about to be carted across the Empire with the one person he thinks might actually finally do the thing no one else ever did. He's pretty sure if he leaves with that caravan tomorrow he will never be the same person. He already feels like something in him can't be put back together properly. But he might finally break out there, and not just bend to the point where he thought he had shattered irreparably like when he burned his parents, but he might truly and utterly lose himself out there, with _him_ and nothing to stop him now that he knows what to hold over his head and turn him compliant. 

It makes him want to bury his face into his knees and suffocate himself against them. Instead he just stares up and at and through the half orc past to where he thinks he can see things moving in the shadows that might be real. 

“We are all kind of assholes,” He finally says and Fjord laughs in return, it's weak and tenuous but Caleb can tell he's trying for his sake. 

He wishes the half orc wouldn't. 

“Yeah, we kinda are, aren't we?”

Caleb knows he should try and smile back, at least let that little tilt to his lips show and huff out an amused breath but he can't muster the energy to do it, to pretend. 

He's grateful when Beau breaks in, seizing her chance to throw her arm across the half-orc’s shoulders and draw him away. 

“So, Mister Hothead-McGee, what's the big deal?” 

“Nothing...” The half orc’s eyes dart to Caleb and there's something knowing in them. “Just all this fucking stress finally getting to me.”

That knowing look terrifies him more than the anger and misplaced suspicion. He would rather it go back to hardened yellow and roiling anger than that pained, regretful glance. He would trade fists and bared teeth for the pity in those eyes. 

“You can say that again." The monk claps Fjord on his shoulder and the two fall into a comfortable chatter that Caleb tunes out, turning back to a nervously pacing Nott and trying to ignore the fact that Yasha may have shared more than he ever wanted shared with the half-orc. 

The goblin isn't looking at him and he takes a moment to look her over. 

She's much improved since last he saw her, when she was curled around her gut and trying not to whimper with each biting cramp of hunger. Whatever food they did get has done wonders and while he's grateful she's walking around again and mostly clear eyed he still has a hard time looking at her and not thinking about everything he traded away upstairs for that meal. It makes him feel ill to look at her and see those things, but he can't get them out of his head, the association burned and rutted into him. 

She finally notices him staring and jumps forward, tugging at his hand and clasping it between her own. He can see in the way she leans towards him that she wants to hug him, comfort him like he's always comforting her, but she holds herself back and he's grateful for it even if he's unsure how she knows not to. She runs a thumb over his knuckles, cradling his hand to her chest in exchange for an embrace and there's creases along her mouth as she frowns, looking down at it. There's blood caught under his fingernails and he's scared to think about how he doesn't know if it's his own or Lorenzo's. 

“You'd tell me if you weren't okay, right?” And her voice is trembling and he feels something crack at the sound of it. 

“Of course,” he lies and it tastes _bitter._

“Okay.” She knows it's a lie too. 

They say nothing for some time, sitting in silence, her hands warm around his and he tries not to remember the reason she's okay in the first place. 

 

\------------ ------------- -------------- ------------- -------------

 

It's hours before the slavers come back down. None of them able to find sleep or rest, all of them restless and anxious for what comes next. 

Caleb flinches at the sound of each footstep, knowing that one of them might be the ones he dreads the most. 

He's not even sure how he'll react. 

In his head he thinks he'll be composed and logical knowing that it can't happen here, not in front of them at least. Knows that Lorenzo said he could be ‘discreet’ about it. He also doesn't trust him, doesn't trust that he won't do it here even when there isn't a contractual agreement between them, because he used to think he knew the slaver, knew how people like him functioned and thought, but now he's not so sure and the uncertainty is more terrifying than the surety of torture he used to always be up against. 

Lorenzo isn't among them and Caleb’s brow furrows, confused but sickeningly grateful. 

They have manacles in their hands. 

They flood into the cell, there's at least four of them and logically Caleb knows they could overpower them easily, but they still aren't sure how many wait upstairs, and with the collars only able to be undone by Lorenzo's hand they would have to rely on their fists until they found him. 

So they let the slavers snap manacles around their wrists and feet, chained in the same way they were when they first got here, gags shoved back into their mouths. 

Caleb is left free and he knows why, they still need him in his collar, but the other collars need to be used for any new slaves they find along the road.

Yasha has her hands chained in front of her and heavy manacles are placed around her ankles. They are smooth and thick black wrought iron, meant to impede her from running more than any enchantment or control. A thick rope is tied between her fettered arms, keeping her tethered to the cell bars while they work, like they're afraid of what she might do even bogged down like she is. 

Caleb has a feeling they don't see him as much of a threat and while that spurs something hot and angry in him he's glad he won't have a constant weight around his wrists to ruminate over. 

He stays curled in his corner, watching them, waiting for Lorenzo to make his appearance from the stairs, awaiting those familiar footsteps, but the slaver doesn't descend and as time drags on it only make him more anxious. More unsure that he'll be able to hold himself together. 

The slavers finish fettering everyone except Jester and Caleb meets her eyes from where he's tucked himself into the wall.

She is equally perplexed by the development, shifting nervously, tail lashing, until one of the slaver’s, a waif-thin half elf, dips his finger along the low cut of her undershirt. Jester reflexively snarls, jerking away and rearing a fist back, but her wrists are caught by another slaver that comes up behind her, this one a gnarled and weathered human that presses up along her. 

“Do you think we ‘ave time to play before the boss gets ‘ere?” The human hisses and Caleb realizes in that moment what Lorenzo has unleashed on them. 

The slaver's underlings weren't completely stupid. 

They could put one and two together and they most likely knew about what was done to him and Yasha and now they probably thought they were all fair game for them to pick and choose from. And Caleb wasn't far gone enough before to not have noticed the lingering eyes on the tiefling or the way some of the slavers stood just a little too close to her, hands straying for a little too long. 

There's red seeping into him, hot and seething and righteous. He can feel that fear there too, but he can also see them tug at her shirt and he can't sit here and let them do this to her, not with his hands free. Not when he has a chance to buck at the unfairness of it and snarl in it's face and rip it to shreds like it did him mere hours ago.

There's knives lining the half elf' s belt, and the other two slavers have left, one standing at the bottom of the stairs arms crossed and the other heading up them. Caleb stares at the dagger closest to him, fingers twitching, listening to Jester's muffled protests as they shove a balled up piece of cloth into her mouth.

He couldn't stop it from happening to himself, but he has a choice here, he has the power now and they should have never assumed he wasn't a threat. He would rather die than sit and watch the sunlight and warmth torn out of her by these pieces of shit. 

His world is red and it's all he sees as it consumes him. 

He doesn't know how exactly it happens, but suddenly there's a spray of blood across his face and he's standing over the half-elf, panting and clutching a red-dipped dagger held limply at his side. The man's throat has a weeping cavern carved into it and he's gasping and clutching at it. The human tries to rush him, but Jester, forgotten in the chaos, slams her tail into his shin and he goes down hard. The slaver at the entrance to the chamber shouts and Caleb hears him rush up the stairs, calling for the others. 

The remaining human groans and clutches at his head as he tries to get up and Caleb can only taste the blood in his mouth, fingers so tight around the blade that it feels like his knuckles are splitting open and spilling his marrow onto the ground. All he can see is Lorenzo and he knows this human isn't him, but he's shaking and thrumming with an unexplainable rage and he needs to get it out. The human looks up at Caleb as he steps forward, his eyes are wide and panicked, prey-like and mirroring the one the slaver put into Jester's eyes when he tore her shirt down her shoulder and buried his nose in her hair, a hand stark against the blue skin of her throat, and he doesn't deserve an ounce of mercy if he never let anyone else have any. 

Caleb thinks about how many times this man has done that to someone, how many times he's shattered someone so intimately and cruelly, he thinks about how he can't erase the hands from himself, but he can stop this human from putting anymore on anyone else. 

Jester sucks in a sharp breath behind him, but he ignores it, honed in on his quarry, hand trembling with something that tastes like anticipation and vengeance. He raises it, crouching over the dazed slaver and determined to take him out of this world where he can't do anything else besides rot.

 

“Put it down, _now_.” 

 

That voice sends acid slipping down his spine and he flinches back, recoiling into himself and away from the door and the heaving human. Lorenzo is there, blocking the cell door with his frame, lips thin and pressed into a disapproving line and Caleb is trapped. 

And instead of the anger and the animalistic fury that had colored him when he was cornered before this is only the most choking of sensations, his head filled with the slide of satin and brush of skin and he's falling back into it. He backbedals, past his rechained friends, past Yasha who is locked onto Lorenzo herself, her brow furrowed and teeth bared in a silent snarl, past Jester who watches him and watches Lorenzo, her shirt ripped and chest still heaving, skin slick with panicked sweat. 

Past all of it until he boxes himself into the farthest corner from the slaver, the dagger reflexively held before him, a warning where it trembles and quakes. Pressed in from both sides by stone, shoulders mashed close as he does his best to become one with them and disappear into the wall and away from the things he remembers slithering over his skin. 

The slaver takes a step forward and there's fury in the obsidian, hardened and cutting that slices across him. He extends a palm, “Give it to me.” 

Caleb shakes his head, ribs heaving, and breath fast. 

It's all he has between him and the slaver. Between him and that extended palm, between the fingers and nails and teeth. His only defense between what happened and what could happen again and he can't pry his bloodied fingers from it. 

“Fight me on this and you'll wish you were dead when I'm done with you.” 

Caleb shakes his head again, the threat making him rock back on his heels and push into the stone. He can't imagine what else the slaver could do that would be worse than what already happened.

“Fine, we'll do this the hard way then.” 

Lorenzo stalks over to Jester and the tiefling stumbles, her back fists up and teeth bared, but the slaver is too quick. He grabs her by the horn and pulls her over to the cell bars at the front. She writhes and snarls out obscenities, clutching at the hand dragging her, tail lashing and smacking into the stone. Lorenzo throws her out of the cell and into a small ring of waiting goons he brought with him that are waiting just outside the cell. 

He turns back to Caleb, teeth grit and eyes narrowed. “Because you won't even do one simple thing I ask you to do how about I just let them run a train on your friend there.”

Caleb pales and his hand falters, the dagger slipping. 

“That's what they were trying to do right? Against orders I might add, but now you know I'm thinking that just maybe they've earned it since you cut one of theirs down and you've managed to piss me right the fuck off.” 

One of the braver ones has slunk forward and caught Jester's ankle in his grip. She kicks at him, bare heel slamming into his eye socket and he recoils with a pathetic squeal. A woman tries her luck next, but Jester whips her across her cheek with her tail, spitting and snarling at the center of the circle, clambering to her feet and whirling about, trying to keep each of the six of them in her sights. 

“So what'll it be? You give me that knife and I call them off or you watch her get torn to shreds. It's up to you, but I would decide quickly because I am _not_ a patient man.” Lorenzo beckons him, curling his hand, and ignoring the struggle just outside the cell. 

Caleb feels like his world has shrunk to a pinprick and Lorenzo encompasses the whole of it, engulfing his vision and smothering him. He wants to throw up, he wants to chuck the knife and watch it sink into the slaver’s eye so he doesn't ever have to see them again, he wants to turn the knife on himself and cut out that part of himself that knows what the slaver looks like naked and sweating over him. 

“Chop, chop, decide, _now_. Is this really worth your friend getting fucked over?” 

No, no it really isn't.

Caleb slinks forward, drawn forth from safety by the sound of Jester yelling and putting up a fight out there because of him. He can stop it if he just hands Lorenzo the knife. He just has to hand him the knife, that's it.

He still can't bring himself to flip the blade end over, still brandishing it between him and the slaver like a barrier as he extends it across a sizeable gap. Lorenzo reaches for it and Caleb has the involuntary urge to slash at his fingers and dart back, but he stays himself, the sound of ripping cloth driving him to stay deadly still as that hand hovers over the metal.

He thinks Lorenzo will grab it by the blade, hopes he will, but the slaver wraps his hand over Caleb’s and squeezes. He keens, feels his palm shift and pop against the hilt until the dagger drops and clatters onto the ground. The slaver drags him close, other hand closing around the collar and his head goes blank with the onslaught of familiar smells and the rumbling bass of it.

“Defy me ever again and I will let them do _whatever_ they want to your friends,” it's hissed and promising and coiled. 

Caleb doesn't doubt him. 

Lorenzo whistles and the pack backs off, Jester is left heaving and huffing at the center, still whole and untouched, but her shirt has been tugged and torn at to the point it sags low on her shoulders, one sleeve ripped down. 

“Bring her back and get her chained up. We have a deadline to meet.” 

There's much grumbling from a few of them, others sweep up the half-elf and cart his now cooling corpse upstairs. Jester is shoved into chains and regagged, but she's at least okay for the most part even if Caleb can see the fear of what almost happened settling across her now. An uncharacteristic tremble in her shoulders.

One that is taking over his own as Lorenzo's hand stays tight around his wrists and he's blank and staring at where the hand connects to his and he starts to forget if they are two seperate things or not, his brain unable to comprehend the sight amongst the shrill ringing. Lorenzo finally releases him to go and remove the collars from the others, and Caleb stands there in his wake, numb and hollowed out now that he no longer has his rage to cling on to. 

There's footsteps beside him and he doesn't want to see who owns them, but the tatters of storm grey and black in the corner of his eye betrays the owner. 

Yasha has snapped the rope that held her to the cell bars, and she's still fetterred, but able to move and stand beside him, the slide of metal loud and grating as she shuffles up. He doesn't meet her eyes and she's slow to place her hand on his shoulder. He doesn't touch it or move from it or brush it off, he just lets her rest her hand there.

It feels like a silent apology, but it's bitter in the wake of it all.

“Let's move people, we need to be on the road before noon,” Lorenzo barks, arm decorated in empty collars as he stomps his way up the stairs. 

Caleb and Yasha are ushered along after him and he turns his head, looking over his shoulder just as he's being pushed out of the cell door and meeting Jester's eyes. She nods, eyes shining and grateful and he doesn't nod back, just turns away. Guilty that he let it get as far as it did.

 

 

\----- ------ ------ ------- ------ -------- 

 

 

Yasha and him are led into the sunlight and he blinks against it, unwilling to relish in the warm bask of it against his skin. It's bittersweet and distant, his thoughts too focused on when Lorenzo will finally pay him back for what transpired down below.

The other slavers move around the two of them, carrying supplies and loading them into the illusioned carts. Other slaves are dragged out, ones that he had hoped had gotten free when they opened their cages but, with the reinforcements hailed in from wherever, they must have rounded some of them up. He doesn't see Nila or her family among the empty-eyed and quiet humanoids and he hopes they made it to the cemetery or where ever they were going. He hopes Shakäste made it there too. 

The slaves heads are bowed low as they're poked and prodded beneath the tarps and into cages. He can feel Yasha shift beside him and he wonders if she remembers all what happened last time she was in one of those. 

“You two, up front,” someone barks, shoving him and avoiding Yasha. 

The barbarian follows, hovering close, but not suffocating. It feels more protective and she occupies a space at his side and back that would otherwise feel vulnerable and over exposed. 

Lorenzo is sat at the helm of the head cart, glancing over a letter, pocketing it as they are forced to approach. Caleb catches a glimpse of a drawing, but it's too quick to make out any details and he's quickly distracted by the slaver's sharp smile. 

“Have you two been to the ocean before?” 

“No." It's an odd question, but he answers it, skin crawling. 

Yasha is silent beside him. 

“Well maybe it'll be one of your new homes, who knows. Ships always need slaves on them after all.” 

Caleb is pretty sure he would be the worst ship hand forced, or not, considering he's never been on one. He's read about it, he knows the technical parts of handling one, but that pales in comparison to the practice of it. He has a feeling Lorenzo isn't bringing him along to sell him, but the slaver won't admit it. It feels like he's the amusement and Yasha is the product he's referring to.

The slaver leans back and shouts to the line of thugs at the door. “You better hold down the fort while I'm gone. If I return and one little thing is out of place you'll understand why _I'm_ in charge here and not you.” 

There's maybe four of them and there can't be much more inside considering how many are flitting around and preparing the carts. Adiran steps up behind the line of thugs, hands clasped and nodding. 

Lorenzo sneers and he can tell the slaver hates having to work with a whole new gaggle of people and Caleb would be lying if he wasn't a smidge satisfied by his frustration. The small bubble of schadenfreude bursts when Lorenzo gestures to the spaces on the seat next to him, grabbing the reins and waiting with a cocked brow. 

“Get on the cart, we don't have all day. And just so you know, I was fine throwing you in the back with the others but I don't trust you not to kill any of my men while I'm not looking." The smirk that curls up his lips tells him he also just wants to watch Caleb squirm. 

Yasha steps up, hefting the chains with her without breaking a sweat or swaying and Lorenzo looks a bit impressed by the display as she sits to his left, staring at the wood slats between her feet. 

Caleb really doesn't want to sit next to him for any amount of this trip. 

He falters and deliberates over trying to talk Lorenzo out of it somehow, but he's already knee deep in shit creek as it is so he clamps his mouth shut and clambers up, stilted and wooden, taking the space on the right. It's cramped and uncomfortable and to avoid falling off he has to sit almost tucked up to Lorenzo's side and the slaver definitely knew it would end up like this because there's a cruel baring of teeth out of the corner of Caleb's eye that sends him shuddering and hunching away.

The slaver snaps the reigns and they are leaving the Sour Nest for the first time in so many days and he wishes he hadn't been taken out of that cell.

A part of him feels like it's still locked up in that room of red sheets as the caravan rolls out the front gates and onto the dirt road. 

 

 

 

\----------- ----------- --------- --------- 

 

 

 

They get to the gates leading out of Shady Creek Run eventually and Lorenzo pays off the guards there with a hefty chunk of change. 

They pass through unimpeded, process only bogged down and slow with the weight of the cargo on each cart. The sun has already started to dip low and Caleb knows they'll have to stop soon. Dreads it even. Nothing has happened yet and Lorenzo has been oddly quiet, busy steering the party of carts and not noticing how Caleb is practically leaning off the edge to avoid the musk and smell of leather clinging to him.

Yasha’s head is turned towards the horizon, and he can't see her face, but he thinks she's searching for a storm. They make it out of the narrow and winding pass and onto the main road just as the sky bleeds into red and oranges and the beginning purples of dusk. 

They continue until there's only the hint of a whisky lavender and stars have begun to bleed through the sheet of black and blue above them. The moons lurk overhead; one a giant reflective celestial eyeball that seems to stare through him and the other a distant dusky red-purple that pales in comparison to the other. 

The caravans come to a stop along a very familiar stretch of road and Caleb pales, head snapping to Yasha who hasn't seemed to recognize where they are. He doesn't think she could have seen a whole lot under the tarp, but he knows she probably heard things if what Jester said was anything to go by. 

Lorenzo grins knowingly, the line of carts pulling to a stop off the road, at the foot of a sloping hill. Two large tree boughs have been moved and shoved from where they once bottle necked the road, but Caleb would recognize this place even if it was burned and razed to the ground. 

He keeps his eyes from drifting to the far side of the road where he knows a familiar coat hangs. 

“We'll make camp here tonight and get a full days travel tomorrow,” Lorenzo calls back to the lead of the other cart who leaps off to begin tying things down and pulling tarps and camp supplies from the back where they've been shoved in among the cages and huddled people. 

Caleb is frozen to the seat, nails digging into the wood. He doesn't know what he's more afraid of, Yasha’s reaction to the coat across the way or what Lorenzo has planned for him. 

A hand curls across the back of his neck and shoves him off the cart and he barely catches himself, stumbling, turning back to Lorenzo with a grimace that falters and slides away with the look in his eyes. The slaver shrugs and steps down himself, the wood dipping beneath his weight and Yasha follows, head bowed but watching Lorenzo out of the corner of her eyes, waiting. 

“Thought you might want to visit an old haunt,” Lorenzo says, spreading his arms and gesturing around him. 

Caleb inches away, trying to put space between the animal musk and himself now that he can.

“Did you bury him here? Or did you all take him somewhere else? I'm curious,” Lorenzo tilts his head, eyes flicking to Yasha when she rumbles low and angry in her chest. 

If she hadn't figure it out before she definitely knows now and she's glaring at Lorenzo, brow dipped low and crackles of fury snapping in her eyes. 

“Woah, there,” Lorenzo laughs, hands up, “was gonna give you a chance to say goodbye, but I might just reconsider with that attitude. I assume you were friends with him too, right?” 

Yasha wrinkles her nose, lips curling, saying nothing. 

Lorenzo turns to him, almost knowing he'll get nothing out of the barbarian, “So where is he?” 

Caleb avoids Yasha’s burning eyes, pointing across the road where he knows he set up the marker. He still can't look at it. 

“A stick? Not very flashy or permanent of a marker for your friend, but I won't judge. I would have just left him to rot in the sun.” 

Caleb starts, confused, head whipping up to see the barest hint of an empty marker in the dim light, darkness almost fully claiming the land now. 

It's gone. 

The coat is gone and he should have known not to trust the shitholes that live in this town to not snag it as they went by. Yasha is already walking towards it, chains dragging around her feet and ignoring whether Lorenzo has explicitly allowed her to go or not. He turns away when she crumples at the foot of the grave, he gives her the privacy to crack and shatter without prying eyes. 

Lorenzo is not so decent and Caleb can see the slaver out of the corner of his eye, watching her, seeming to draw some kind of amusement or satisfaction from it, a tilt at the corner of his lips has gold crowns poking through. 

“I've never seen her fall apart like that you know. Not _once_ ,” And his voice is wistful and hungry and Caleb feels sick. Fingers curl around the back of his neck, holding on this time, nails digging into the flesh. “Not like you did.” 

He shakes against his better judgement, staring at his still bare feet, the feel of grass and dirt beneath them after so long is novel now, quaint and dull in lieu of the calloused digits. 

There's footsteps and Yasha returns finally. Lorenzo releases him and turns to her. Caleb doesn't. 

“Well, now that that's done." The slaver makes his way to the grave and Caleb hisses in a breath as he grabs up the marker, snapping it over his leg and bringing it back to them, eyes hooded and dark. He can hear Yasha’s teeth grind in the dark. 

Lorenzo smirks. “Let's start a fire shall we?”


	8. A Familair Scenario and An Even More Familair Ghost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -same warnings as previous two chapters
> 
> -brief mentions/depictions of forced cannibalism (mostly implied and not explicitly stated) 
> 
> -emetophobia warning

The fire leaps into the sky, crackling embers and popping cinders jumping and licking up into the inky black in hungry searching fingers of light. Molly's grave marker is somewhere in there, amongst the empty funeral pyre, swallowed up by the flames and turned to climbing cinders that march up and towards the moon looming above. Yasha is leaned up against a tree at the edge of camp, two slavers watch her, their crossbows laid across their laps as they trade stories and tales, squabbling and bickering and filling the space with raucous laughter. 

Caleb has been forced to kneel close to the flames and Lorenzo paces before him, hands clasped behind his back and looking for all the world to him like a slouching predator. Framed neatly by the crawling light, his teeth slick and sharp in the licking reds and oranges, steps final and sure and with no hesitation as they close in. 

“You killed one of my men.” The slaver ticks off a finger.“You disobeyed me.” And another. “And you made it look like I can't control my own pets in front of them too.” The last one falls and Lorenzo whirls on him. “I should just kill you, you know. Nothing seems to be working and there's still something in you that just won't die and I don't understand what it is.” 

Caleb thinks it's probably self hatred. Poisonous and tenacious it's an impossible thing to kill and he clings to it with everything he has.

Lorenzo crouches down in front of him, seizing the amulet around his neck and Caleb hisses in a sharp breath between his teeth, but he keeps his eyes trained on the leather of the slaver's boots. He doesn't want to see those eyes, the teeth, his face looming above him again. 

“I could take this away just for all of that. That would break us even wouldn't it?” He tugs at the leather chord, threatening to snap it off, and Caleb recoils. “It's just a necklace it can't mean more to you than your friends or yourself can it?” 

Caleb shakes his head, unable to explain and unwilling to, his own fingers hiding it from view as Lorenzo drops it. Its one of the only things he has left. He can't lose it now. 

“Fine then. What do you have to trade me then?” The slaver asks and Caleb stares at the dirt under those boots and tries not to think about the crawl of phantom fingers down his sides. 

He has nothing but the clothes on his back and himself-- and he's leery to hand over either again. 

“How about the fingers off your goblin's left hand? I think that would do nicely as a trade, don't you?”

Caleb sucks in a sharp breath, hunching into himself, fingers curled into fists atop his thighs. 

“I can just get Harter to send a message real quick and they can do it in a jiff and you'd be off the hook--" He snaps his fingers. “--just like that.” 

He thinks about how the goblin values her hands over everything, how without deft fingers and nimble mits she would lose an entire part of herself with them. 

“What's the problem here? It's not you losing fingers, just her. Why do you even care about something like a goblin anyways? They're uncouth little cowards. Worked with some once and ended up killing the whole lot of them, sticky fingered little things.” 

Sometimes he forgets Lorenzo isn't human, that he just wears a skin over his true one, but then he makes comments like that and it's back into sharp clarity.

And he doesn't know why he would trade everything away just for her. 

But she's the first spot of light he had after the asylum, after living in the woods for so long, slowly going mad again with only a cat to talk to and she hadn't sneered at him or spit at him, hadn't taken advantage of his vulnerableness in the corner of that prison cell as others might have. 

She had spoken to him, low and soft and soothing and he had latched onto it, latched onto her when they escaped that shithole. She had filled an empty void that was burned away by himself when he was too stupid to realize what was happening and he had found someone to call a friend amongst the self hatred and the loneliness. 

It was something bright, something different to care about, something to fret over and shield and he had grown more and more protective over that spark of light as time went on. He knows he has to protect it, protect her, for his own sake now or else lose a part of himself completely. 

_She's the only family he has left._

Lorenzo sighs, almost dramatically, like he knows where this is going to end up but he's drawing it out to amuse him. Pretending like he'll give him a chance to escape this. 

Caleb can't look up. He know what's waiting for him there. And so he trembles and waits, sides expanding and falling, a snare growing tighter and tighter around his ribs. There's the shift of leather and the clink of metal as Lorenzo crouches and Caleb ducks his head, tucks his chin further, wishes he could escape even just the smell of the slaver. Fingers twist at a strand of hair and he can see it shine in the firelight out of the the corner of his eye, auburn refracting orange. 

“You know, red hair is so _odd_. I don't see much of it, even in my profession, and let me just say, do you lot always sell so damn _well_.” 

It feels like a threat, but also just an idle observation and he's not sure what to take away from it as the slaver continues to thumb at the strand. 

He doesn't even know what he would be sold to do.

He can't work on any war camp borders, he's waif thin and unmuscular and he wouldn't be allowed to use his magic and he would most definitely be killed the second he set foot on those fields. He doesn't think he's attractive enough to be a personal slave of any kind, but with the way Lorenzo talks someone would buy him somewhere and he thinks he would either kill the new owner or himself before he let that happen. But with the way the slaver growls and rumbles and leers he doesn't think he'll ever see any of it. That he'll sooner die beneath him than be sold to turn a profit.

The slaver drops it, rocking back on his heels and Caleb breathes a fraction easier with the space put between them. “So, what'll it be then? It's either the goblin or you, because I don't see anything else for you to offer me besides that.”

He can feel it forming on his lips, the syllable pushing at his teeth, coiled on his tongue. And he can't believe he's back here again, forced into the same situation and with the same thing held over his head.

It feels like a nightmare and he thinks he might be back in that cell still, curled up on the ground and fast asleep, but this feels too vivid, too real. No, he thinks as he finally looks up at the slaver, he wouldn't be able to imagine the hunger in Lorenzo's eyes so accurately. 

He wonders if there's something so wrong with him that he attracted this kind of attention from the slaver, and he wants to burn those parts away from himself forever, starting with his hair. He wants to get rid of the whole lot so Lorenzo can't run his hands through it or be intrigued by something he can't help or change. He wants to scar up every inch of untouched skin so even something as vile and disgusting as Lorenzo wouldn't want to touch it. He wants to lay on top of that fire behind Lorenzo, the one that casts him into darkness and shadow with the slaver's looming form, and he wants to watch his flesh wither away until no one, not even the gods, can touch it. 

Instead he breathes out that damning word, the one that will condemn him again, whispered and halting, chest collapsing. "Me.” 

The answering smile is sharp, carnivorous, and he's already being devoured in it. “I thought so.” 

He's pulled to his feet and led off to a canvas tent at the far side of the camp, larger than the others and less riddled with holes. 

He can feel Yasha's eyes on him the whole time. 

 

 

 

\--------- ------------ 

 

 

 

He wakes up and he wishes he hadn't. 

Light seeps in from the corners of the tent and the loose weave of the canvas, dappling his skin in droplets of sun. It shouldn't be such a sinister picture, but it sends him quaking as he looks over the new bruises pressed into his skin. Runs trembling fingers over them, splays his hand over the large handprint spanning his hip, far larger than the span of his own-- scratches at the marks with his nails as it'll remove them. 

He thought that maybe knowing what to expect this time would make it easier, no matter how sickening a thought that is, but it only worsened it. The harrowing anticipation and the terrible knowing of what it would feel like only made the whole thing so much worse than before. 

And this time Lorenzo hadn't been silent. 

He had hissed things in his ear, things that turned his skin inside out and made his stomach twist and whither. Things that for some reason stuck to him harder than just the acts themselves. 

And even with his memory as unfailing as it is there's a block there, standing and warping the memory. Like looking through fogged glass and he can only catch snippets of it, a vague idea, but he doesn't know what exactly lays beyond that barrier and he's sure it will return to him when he's alone and drowning in nightmares later. 

His clothes aren't torn to shreds this time either. They're almost neatly slumped beside him, against the grass and spilling off where the bed roll ends. He tries not to think about how they were slowly peeled from him this time, intimate and languid fingers brushing over the plain cotton and stuttering over his collar bones. Pausing and dragging and so much slower than before, slower than he thought they could ever be. Methodical and precise, garnering whatever they wanted from him-- and Caleb remembers a disgusting heat skittering across his skin that he wanted to tear out and churn beneath his heel as time wore on and the hands dipped lower. 

Lorenzo is gone, the space beside Caleb empty and yawning, the impression of a heavy form still sunk into it. 

There's no blood spattering the bed roll and none on his skin. The darkest red thing on him is a bruise latched onto the line where his neck meets his shoulder and he knows it's there because he remembers it being put there. Remembers tensing and shrinking from the searching lips, whining, low and distressed at the sensation of it, nauseated by the involuntary stroke of heat in his gut. Remembers a hand trailing down and down and--

Caleb heaves, rolling up onto his hands and knees, strings of spit and bile-- and whatever else was put in there-- sticking to his lips and burning at his throat until he's left panting and shivering in its wake. His fingers curl into the soil and he feels it give beneath them, real and tangible, cold with a hint of moisture. He stares down at the strips of shiny, half-digested meat amongst the strands of viridian, quaking and trying to figure out how they got there. 

 

_The slaver brushes a thumb over his bottom lip, drawing it down, obsidian eating away the white beneath the red._

_“I know you haven't eaten yet.”_

_Caleb tries to shake his head._

_Because he did, he remembers eating crumbs from the bread, numb and mechanical as he pressed it past his lips, but he ate some of it all the same. It was nowhere near enough, yet he doesn't want whatever the slaver has to offer him._

_“And after I was so generous as to give you a real meal.” And he remembers the nondescript strips of dried meat and fruits and other things on that plate, remembers bile crawling up his throat at the sight of it. Remembers not touching it in the wake of their bargain._

_Lorenzo reaches into a pouch clipped to his side, and they're still fully clothed at this point, but Caleb doesn't know how long that will last, doesn't know how long he'll be able to keep the clothes pressed to his skin and hidden beneath them. The slaver draws a familiar array of dried strips of meat from the leather, stringy and sinewy, shiny with salt and curing. He holds them out like an offering, like Caleb is supposed to leap for them like a dog, and he just watches them warily. His tongue tastes like ash and he doesn't want to eat anything, certainly not anything the slaver has to offer him._

_“Take it.”_

_The words are so final and so plain._

_They don't betray the way Lorenzo watches him as he obeys, heated and dark, clouded with promises._

_Caleb's hands curl around the strips, nails digging into the leathery spring of dried meat and he doesn't want to eat it. There's something slithering in Lorenzo's eyes that makes him never want to put the food to his lips._

_“Eat it.”_

_He shivers, shrinking back into himself, hunched and swallowed up in the dusky wine shirt that was never his, and he wants to shake his head. Say no, throw the food out into the dark, into the fire he knows roars outside, but he can't. He has to obey, for Nott's sake, for his own-- and Lorenzo knows he has to. He counts on it._

_The meat tastes like dirt on his tongue at first and then it's not, it's something else and he reluctantly chews on it-- and it's like nothing he's ever eaten before. Its sweet and tender and he can feel bile starting to chase up his throat to join it and Lorenzo is still watching him, lips twisting into a smirk, teeth sharp and Caleb's reminded he's a carnivore in every sense of the word and he has a terrifying idea about what he's being forced to to do._

_He stops, unable to get it down, eyes wide and fingers fisted into the fabric beneath him and he doesn't want to think. Doesn't want to think about _who_ he's being forced to chew on._

_But it's all that fills his head._

_Lorenzo rumbles and it's a laugh like thunder, before there's a hand pressed over his mouth and nose, fingers maneuvering the edges of his throat. He's forced to swallow and he wants to fall apart as it slides it's way down._

__

 

He shuffles away from the the bile and meat splattering the grass and his stomach twists so painfully he heaves again. He needs to get it all out. He can almost feel it curled and heavy in the pit of him and he wants to laugh and cry, rake his nails across the skin there until he can reach in and pull it out himself. 

He doesn't want to think about the fearful tear-stained face of a scared child or the slaver cutting them down to butcher and prepare with all the care of a man slaughtering a pig. 

He remembers the slaver forcing him to eat every last scrap of it and once he was done with that he had moved on to ruin the other parts of him as well. And Caleb thinks something in him is broken and twisted, fucked up beyond repair as he sits back on his heels and remembers Lorenzo forcing him to draw some kind of pleasure from all of it. Remembers a curling, oppressive, near frenzied burning that had tangled with the fear and the trepidation so easily. Tore him apart more than the hands dragging across him.

Caleb fumbles for the discarded shirt and slacks, practically tears the clothes back onto himself, hiding what he can beneath them and covering up that new feeling of shame slithering amongst the void. He knows Yasha won't mistake the bruises or the hitch in his step for anything other than what is, but he can try and keep her from finding out that some animal, some wholly physical part of himself responded to it in any way. 

Caleb’s fingers brush against chilled metal and he curls them reflexively around the amulet, relieved when it's still there. There's flashes of something as he's kneeled there on the bed roll, an image juxtaposing over the one in front of him. 

 

_He's kneeled and Lorenzo is kneeling in front of him as well, still almost towering over him. Thighs quivering beneath him, palms sweat-slicked as fingers tug at the amulet around his neck, dragging him forward by it. And they know he'll follow if it means he keeps it on. There's a hand tangled in his hair and it's pushing him down and down and---_

 

His stomach spasms again, bile crawling its way up his throat and he dry heaves against it, clapping a hand over his mouth. 

He needs to leave this tent. 

He scrambles up, ducking out the flaps and into the blinding white of morning. A lazy dappling snowfall greets him, flecks of white drifting down and the clouds thin and grey, wispy and whimsical above him. And it would be oddly beautiful if Lorenzo wasn't standing next to the dead fire, the charred logs long put out and the last vestiges of smoke curling from them. 

The slaver turns and he can see Yasha is there too, almost hidden behind him, and the barbarian is staring straight at him. And he's never been more glad to not be able to see what's going on behind those mismatched eyes than he is now. Lorenzo waves him over and he answers, a dog on a leash, stilted and hollow and unwilling to disobey.

The flash of teeth and the praising way the eyes linger on the bruise at the junction of his neck has something in him recoiling and hissing, but his physical body just stands there, pliant and wrung out. He can feel Yasha looking him over, see out of his peripherals as her eyes linger on that bruised mark, stark against his skin and framed by the collar of the red shirt that hangs off him like it was never meant for someone so whip thin. He can hear the sharp grind of her teeth and the huff of angry air that leaves her. 

“Now that you're _finally_ up we can get back on the road.” 

And Caleb doesn't even know why the slaver let him sleep in, why he says it like he's done him a courtesy, like he might owe him for it later and he doesn't want to think about that. 

Someone's already breaking down Lorenzo's tent, making quick work of it and heaving it back into the cart with the rest of their cargo and supplies. Lorenzo beckons over the halfling from before, Harter he thinks, the bard sliding up and eyeing him and Yasha to either side of the slaver distastefully, his lip curled.

“Wha’?” Harter asks, hands on his hips, having to crane his head back to look Lorenzo in the eyes. 

“Send a message to the Nest. Tell them I want one of the goblin's fingers, they can choose which.”

Caleb lunges for the slaver without thinking, ignoring every part of him that tells him to stay away. Arms encircle him before he can send his fist into Lorenzo's jaw, and he claws at them, kicks at the ground. Sends an elbow back into Yasha who doesn't even budge, gnashes his teeth and swipes out at the grinning slaver who just takes a step out of reach and laughs. And he doesn't even care how feral he probably looks as he twists and writhes in Yasha's grip, he just wants to tear that smug smirk off Lorenzo's face. 

He can feel the wet tracks already marching down his cheeks and he thinks it's funny how he didn't cry during the whole ordeal but he is now-- because he traded himself away for _nothing_. 

Lorenzo watches him, amused, leaning down and inspecting him like he's a dog jumping at its leash; harmless and trite.

“You said-- You--” And he can't get the words out from where they are jammed up and jumbled in his head and he wants to tear into Lorenzo's throat. 

“I know what I said, but you also didn't go quietly so I feel like I'm owed at least something." The slaver tilts his neck and there's raking nail marks down the right side of it. He can't remember putting them there. 

The halfing sends the message, lazily, like he isn't authorising the maiming of a creature and Caleb wishes the fire was still roaring so he could shove the halfling into it. 

When Harter finishes the correspondence Lorenzo pats Caleb on the cheek. “See, _now_ we're even.” 

And the more Caleb looks at those shiny ragged marks on Lorenzo’s neck the more he remembers and he sags against Yasha's hold, falling limp, mind going foggy. 

 

_A hand brushes over his hip, the slaver smirking where he's curled above him as Caleb whines and kicks with his heels. Tries to scrabble away uselessly, trapped beneath the slaver's other hand that pins him easily, effortlessly._

_He slides back up the length of him, planting an elbow next to Caleb's ear as the hand drifts into the dip of his pelvis and he tries to get away from it as it inches closer and closer and there's a fire in his gut that he wants to put out._

_He panics when it seizes him._

__

_Doesn't think about the consequences or the repercussions when he's hooking ragged and broken and abused nails into the slaver's neck and tearing, trying to rip him off and away._

_The weight and the hand-- and all of it-- leave him for a blissful second. Lorenzo recoils that same hand that had wandered too far in its search to clutch at the new wound instead. Beads of red-black slipping past the fingers and the slaver looks genuinely surprised at the sight of it, drawing his hand away and watching it slide down the digits._

_The palm leaves his chest and Caleb immediately scrambles across the bed roll, up towards the head of it, and away from the kneeling slaver, curling his legs close, clawing at the dirt and grass-- He only makes it a few inches before fingers, slicked in cooling blood, seize his ankle and rip him back under._

_He stares up at the flaring nostrils, the trailing rivers of sluggish rust that snake down and pool around the dips and valleys of the slaver's collar bones. Stare blankly up at tensed muscles, and up into the grit-toothed grimace, bared into a snarl that matches the eyes._

_“You do anything like that ever again and I'll break your hips so fucking bad you won't walk out of here or anywhere else under your own volition ever again.”_

_That hand presses down onto the fanning edge of his pelvis, thumb and fingers digging and pushing until he can feel something start to pop, an alarming give starting to take root in the bone, and he tries not to scream._

_When the hand finally resumes it's conquest Caleb doesn't fight it, eyes distant and staring up into the canvas where he knows the stars are. He tries to remember each constellation, tracing along where he knows they should be, escaping up into that unseen celestial starscape and ignoring the way something eats up every inch of his skin down here, amongst the worms and the dirt and the earth._

__

 

He comes to, wide-eyed and shivering, leaned against a large spoked wheel. 

Yasha has apparently dragged him over towards the carts and crouched down in front of him, her hand on the side of his cheek. She withdraws it slowly and he focuses on her frown rather than the unpaired orbs above them. Her lips are moving, but he's having a hard time hearing her, everything sounds muffled and far away and his brow furrows. 

“--get him up in the cart.” Lorenzo's voice cuts in through the fog, clearer than everything else around him and he flinches away from it. 

He feels hands gently hoisting him to his feet, the barbarian letting him fall against her side. And he can't quite figure out why his limbs won't work, they feel put in all wrong and he's submerged in a black box with one wall as his window to the outside. He thinks he might be on the farthest side from it, peering at it like it isn't his hands or his arms or his feet it's focused on. 

It feels safer like this and so he stays, distant and rocking in the swells of black and grey. He's not sure how much time passes, for once his brain not ticking off every agonizing second. He drifts and clings onto all of it for as long as he can. Time slips by outside his little window and he ignores it in favor of falling into the tempting ink pooled around him, watches it shift into slate and reflective midnight glass beneath him.

It shatters when something strikes across his cheek and suddenly it's dusk and morning has vanished in an instant and Lorenzo is standing in front of him, frowning, hand raised. 

“You finally back with us?” the slaver drawls, eyeing him.

 

Caleb recoils a step, blinking, glancing about at the fire and the re-set up camp. At the stretch of wood they've set up in, and it's all different, but he could have sworn they just broke down the camp moments ago. 

“Is he always like this?” Lorenzo asks off to the side to a scowling Yasha who doesn't answer. 

The slaver scowls back, a muscle jumping in his cheek as he grinds his teeth. He's staring at the barbarian and she's staring back, and neither of them are backing down and Caleb shuffles back, wary of the cracking tension between them. 

Lorenzo steps into Yasha’s space and where the slaver stands inches above him, she's almost the same height as him. And Caleb can see him bristling, proverbial hackles rising as he squares off with her, fingers hooking in her collar and dragging her forward. 

“You know I'm starting to get tired of your attitude. It was amusing at first, but now it's just _aggravating_ ,” the slaver hisses, low and whip-like. 

There's something clutched in her hand, tiny and almost imperceptible. He would have missed it if he wasn't actively looking everywhere besides the slaver and Yasha’s eyes. It looks like a scrap of paper, but it's hard to tell and he doesn't think Lorenzo has noticed it trapped in her clenched fist. 

Yasha just glares at Lorenzo, staring him down, shoulders tensed and something dangerous and feral wrinkling her lips. 

“What's got you in such a damn mood all of a sudden? You were quiet on the way here, damn pleasant for once even. And now you've gone all dog-eared on me again and I don't much appreciate it." His hand shifts to snatch the chains linking her wrists and he starts pulling her towards something.

“Maybe you just haven't learned your place yet,” Lorenzo snarls and she goes reluctantly, digging in her heels and pulling on the manacles. 

It only seems to ratchet up the slaver's annoyance and he whirls on his heel, dragging her in close by that connecting chain. And Yasha’s teeth are bared now and they are both nearly growling at each other. Caleb takes another half-step back, nerves starting to skitter. 

“You want me to just have him take your place then, huh? You already condemned him once, but I'm sure he won't even care if you do it again will he?” Lorenzo spits, closing his fingers around Yasha's throat, digging into the flesh above the collar until his knuckles are white. 

Caleb shakes his head, and Lorenzo is talking about him like he's not even there and it unnerves him to the point he starts to shuffle another slow step back, but fingers snatch his wrist and hold him fast. He pulls against it, fumbles at the digits with blunt nails and tries to pry them off with a low whine working it's way out between his teeth. Lorenzo doesn't even flinch, holds them both fast, bearing down on Yasha and ignoring Caleb in favor of the barbarian. Sharp, gold teeth on full display, shining in the nearby firelight and that same fire is dancing across Yasha’s wrinkled and snarling face. 

He thinks they look like wolves squabbling over prey, their fangs bright with drool, and he's caught between them. The grip on his wrist tightens to the point he can hear something pop and a low keen leaves him. 

 

“What'll it be then?” Lorenzo hisses. 

 

Yasha drops the thing in her hands as she brings them up to grapple with the slaver's fingers collaring her throat. Lorenzo, thoroughly distracted by her now, doesn't see the piece of paper, but Caleb does. It flutters down, hitting the dirt next to Lorenzo's boot and Caleb stares at it, but the letters penned in scratchy ink swim about, unfocused. 

“Neither,” Yasha chokes out.

“Neither?" Lorenzo laughs. "Oh, I'm sorry, but that ain't exactly an option here.” 

The letters right themselves into a familiar loopy penmanship of dotted i's and looping cursive and he blinks at it. He can barely see it, but it's only two words. 

_‘Distract him’_

 

Something whistles by his head and he recoils from it instinctively. It sticks into that weathered, leather breastplate with a twang and Lorenzo reflexively drops Caleb's wrist to reach for it. The slave pulls free a crossbow bolt just as shouts start up from the edges of the camp. The bright flash and pop of small explosives follows just outside the reach of the firelight. Round, little objects tumble through the air, spinning wick over end before smacking into the ground, spitting colorful and vibrant smoke that starts to obfuscate the space with a hiss. And Caleb can see the faintest hint of figures moving about in the dark of the boughs and trunks surrounding them, hears more shouts that turn into gurgles and dying screams. Caleb takes the opportunity to backpedal away from Lorenzo and away from the sight of the fire. 

Yasha is still snarling, but there's a tilt to her lips as she grabs Lorenzo’s arm and uses it as leverage, planting her foot in his midsection and kicking the startled slaver away. It's just enough to send him stumbling back and almost into the flames. He snaps back to her with a growl, skin tinted an icy blue that starts to creep and crawl over him, his form beginning to grow and bulge in the orange light. Caleb is almost to the tree line now, backing away from the clearing where Lorenzo snatches up a familiar glaive and stands feet taller, strands of tangled hair sprouting from his skull and visage twisting into a devil's. 

Yasha snaps the line between her manacles, the chain links popping and skittering across the ground and he wonders how long she could have done that for, guilty that she didn't take her chance to escape because of him. 

She boxes her feet and waits for the slaver to make a move, rage tensed across her frame. Lorenzo swings, the glaive arcing and aiming for her side and she turns, braces her arms, catches the blade with her cuffs. The answering ring of connecting steel in the chilled air is deafenong and she shoves against it, ducking under the weapon where it drives harmlessly into the dirt. The slaver practically froths at the mouth, wrenching the blade from the earth and snarling. Caleb backs himself against a tree, digs his fingers into the bark and watches as Yasha dodges and deflects, holding her own against the brute.

One of the patrolling thugs comes tearing from the dark beside him and towards the glow of the fire, a blast of twisted energy cutting him down. Caleb glances back to catch a glimpse of a familiar blue and green glow from the dark before it disappears back into the deepening shadows of the trees. A sudden fog drifts in around the area he's backed himself into and across the battlefield, mingling with the still colorful curling columns of smoke. Smothering Yasha and Lorenzo within it until he can only see the shine of steel and hear their continued growls and snarls as they bear down on each other.

A hand presses something into his and he startles, glancing down to see a familiar, green face and worried yellow eyes. He feels like he might collapse at the sight of her, but there's a leather glove being pushed into his grip and he pulls it reflexively onto quaking fingers, covering the brand there with leather dipped in arcane sigils. Another hand brushes along his shoulder and he goes to flinch away from it, but there's a warmth there and everything fades away for a moment; the dull aches and the blemishes dotting him dripping off his skin. 

Shakäste is there and he's looking at him with determined white-filmed eyes and a soft smile tilting his lips. “Told you I'd come back for you all.” 

And Caleb doesn't know how to respond, it's almost like it's not happening, like he's dreamed this all up, but he's staring at where more figures emerge from the darkness, dropping dead slavers onto the dirt, brandishing weapons, and starting to close in around the obfuscating clouds draped over the fire. The shifting shadows of Yasha and Lorenzo can still be seen through it, the fire haloing them and refracting in the mist like a crackling firestorm. 

Shakäste waves his hand and it's whisked away in an instant and Caleb can see Yasha now; holding onto the glaive's handle, arms trembling and face twisted as she keeps it from swinging down and cleaving into her. Lorenzo finally notices the gathering around him and he bares his teeth, wrenching the glaive back and out of Yasha’s surprised fingers before swinging it down into her again, quicker than Caleb's ever seen the slaver move before. Yasha takes the blow square in her side and rolls with the momentum, getting back to her feet and clutching at the splatters of red across her ribs. 

“So you all came back to try again, hu-”, Lorenzo flinches, whatever thing he was about to say next cut off by the wincing burst of blood vessels along his neck that splash a sickly, black liquid.

And Jester is there, hand outstretched towards the slaver, standing beside Yasha and passing the barbarian a familiar blade. Yasha takes it, fingers wrapping around the hilt like a lifeline. 

“Do you really think because you killed my lackeys that you can kill _me_?” Lorenzo sneers it, laughing all the while and it grates against Caleb's skin in all the wrong ways. Has him clutching at the glove and starting to tug at the edges of it. 

The small wounds Lorenzo sustained from Yasha are already starting to knit closed and the slaver squares his shoulders, flicking the blood off the glaive and staring them all down as even more enter the light. “Look at all of you, _pathetic insects_ , you don't even know what you're dealing with.” 

Caduceus, Keg, Beau, and Fjord have joined their small half-circle now as well. They are all standing in a scattered 'U' in the clearing, their backs to the tree line and facing where Lorenzo has planted himself in front of the still roaring fire, framed by the climbing flames like a true devil. 

Caleb stares at him, frozen.

He thinks this is what Lorenzo is always meant to look like, so that there is no denying what he was truly capable of. Drool dripping from around the jutting tusks, curling horns sprouting from his skull, eyes that brim with blood, and the promise to devour them when he's finished here. And it's nearly funny...how the visage of the monster terrifies him far less than the idea of the man.

Theres a sharp gust of wind beside him and the fire, which had roared and burned vibrantly until this point, wavers and collapses into a shower of embers that plume up and into the night. And in those last dredges of light, when cinders still twirl and arc into the sky and the low luminescence of the logs sends a curling russet ringing into the earth, someone steps into the clearing, moonlight bathing them in sharp silvers as they walk.

They drag a curved blade along the back of their neck in a motion that has Caleb's brow furrowing, and eyes widening as ot bursts into radiant dripping light. And all Caleb can see is lavender skin and a trailing chromatic coat, and a voice he didn't think he would ever hear again. One that he thought he laid into the ground miles back and many days ago, six feet under, to be forgotten as a memory. 

“That's funny, because the only pathetic thing I see here is _you_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Discord: Ara#6309  
> Tumblr: trashofboat


	9. Moon-Touched

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Molly time <3

Molly is pretty sure this plan is the stupidest most risky thing they've ever come up with. There's a lot of moving parts and it's maybe even riskier than that day at the foot of the sloping hill. 

But he wouldn't have gotten this far if he didn't take risks. 

He hands a strip of parchment to Jester who quickly scrawls the message onto it and hands it to a waiting Grand Duchess perched on her horn. The hummingbird is small, but there's an odd otherworldly presence to it that betrays it's fey nature and she grabs up the paper without an issue, even though the thing is nearly the size of her. 

There's a sharp whistle from across the road and Fjord is waving and pointing down the length of it, Caduceus behind him, and most likely to have been the one who noticed whatever it was first. He hasn't had much of a chance to interact with the pastel firbolg yet, what with their rush out of the slaver's nest and all, but Molly can tell he is perceptive. The way he watches them all and everything around him carefully, if not a little distracted by all of it as well. 

Molly peers down the dirt road, squinting, the slight rise of dust and distant speck betraying the slow movement of carts. He pulls Jester back, melding into the tree line and waiting in the shadows, Shakäste is crouched with them, whispering to the familiar perched on his finger and Molly hopes the cleric is very thoroughly explaining how this needs to go down. 

It had been easy to catch up and surpass the weighed down slavers, even with their delayed departure. Traveling recklessly and through and far into dusk after gathering themselves and immediately taking off after the missing two. They had used the horses left at the slaver's stables and doubled up as needed, payed at the gate with the money looted from the den, and tearing off after them, pushed the beast's to their limits until they were finally about an hour or so ahead of the caravan. They had skirted by them when the slaver's had pulled off the road for a brief moment, but they didn't stop then, wanting to have time to gather themselves. 

And now they're here, a little exhausted but ready all the same. 

Molly had contemplated ambushing them at the sight of his temporary grave, wanting to see the look on Lorenzo's face when he emerged from the dark like a specter to cut him down, but the slaver’s had already passed it and the area was too sparse and clear for them to scatter the ranks and pick them off one by one anyways. And they had to be _careful_ , none of them were too sure which ones were magic users, him least of all, and he was at least wary enough not to throw them all into a stacked battle again if he could help it. 

It's a long agonizing hour before the carts are finally close enough to really see anything on. 

Molly curses when he sees Yasha and Caleb smashed into the front with Lorenzo, teeth grinding. 

“What are we supposed to do _now_? We can't get the thing to them and it won't work if we can't divert Lorenzo's attention for even just a little bit at least,” Jester laments, clutching at the reclaimed symbol on her belt. 

Shakäste frowns, holding the Grand Duchess out so he can see what they are looking at. The cleric frowns. “I can at least send her out to let them know we're around and make sure they're paying attention when we do drop it off.” 

Jester shakes her head, picking at the new divots and dings in the Traveler's symbol. “If Lorenzo sees her he'll know it's us,” and her voice is impossibly guilty in that instant. 

Molly rests a hand on her shoulder, frowning and glancing out to where he can see the caravan rolling closer. “We'll think of something, we always do.” 

A message curls into his head and he whips his head around to where he knows Nott is across the way. 

“They aren't in the back of the carts like we thought. Are we still going through with it?” 

Molly purses his lips, looking over to Beau who's clutching at a small handful of firecrackers they found left over at the bottom of the haversack. She's picking at one of the wicks, eyes dark and fingers probably itching to chuck it at Lorenzo and the carts. 

Something in his head sparks. 

“No. We wait ‘til they set up camp for the night. I have another idea.” 

 

 

\----- ----- ----- ----

 

He's waiting, crouched close enough to be able to see the camp if need be, but far enough he won't catch the light. 

He idly taps his hand against his chest as he waits, nervously drumming his sternum and the shiny, scarred mess there. It had been hard to see the condition of the two he was most worried about on the cart as it rolled by, the dredges of dusk had settled in and hid their faces in long shadows. But the flash of the glaive propped up next to Lorenzo had been unmistakable and Molly had curled a fist over his sternum reflexively at the sight of it.

He knows the flesh there is a tangled, almost silver-purple. Standing out against the other darkened and raised lines across his neck and chest, and it glimmers like a pool of moonlight under the right light. 

And dying had been a funny thing. 

He hadn't been afraid of it, he had fallen into it and it had embraced him easily, familiarly. What he _had_ been afraid of was the glimpse of Beau's face, perched atop the backs of the horses, eyes wide and jaw going slack like she had never expected to see a blade go right through him. He remembers hoping the remaining bunch of terribly loveable idiots would survive without him. And a part of him remembers being vindictive, knowing that Beau could never repay him and he would always have one up on her if she survived. 

He didn't close his eyes against it, he stared up into the beginnings of a snow fall, the greys and the whites of it swimming into a darkening pastel and eventually it all faded into nothing. The curdled tang of a curse at the edge of his cooling tongue. 

Then it had been blank and endless.

Not cold or warm or even neutral. 

It just _wasn't._

And there had been fear; after the fact, in that impossible intangibility. A fear for the friends he left to an unknown fate, but never fear for himself. He wasn't scared of what waited for him there. 

He had died with no regrets, but he knew he had left things unfinished. He had left three of them in a cell somewhere to be turned inside out, and the others along the road against an impossible fight with an outcome he may never know. And after an indeterminable amount of eternity a voice had curled from that emptiness, soft and pale as moonlight and just as gentle, soothing, like it was brushing against his skin that no longer existed. 

__

'You have much left undone.'

There wasn't a physical presence to see in the nothing, he only had the impression of soft silvers and blue draping light.

__

'And I have much left for you to weave.'

It felt like a hand brushing along his non-existent sternum, cold comforting seams of silver stitching across it and into it. 

__

'You cannot die yet, Mollymauk Tealeaf.'

 

And he had breathed in dirt and cold frigid air, curled his fingers around the hand grasping his and pulling him free from his grave. He had looked up into a worn, weathered face, framed by a static shock of white hair and he had _remembered_. 

He remembers not even caring about the silt and earth lodged in his throat after that. Laughing and delighted that he was still him and him alone. That no Lucien or Nonagon had crept in and taken his body while he was gone. 

 

And now, in the dark at the edge of a slaver’s campsite waiting for a signal, he still doesn't know how he's back or why, but looking up at the watchful eye of the moon, it's dwarfed dusty sister beside her, there's something familiar about it. Something that settles warmly against his chest like a knowing hand. 

There's a low whistle to his left and he looks over to see Fjord, illuminated in low blues and greens by the sword in his hand. The half orc points to something beyond the twisting and gnarled trees and towards the roaring orange of the fire light between the shadows. 

Molly turns to see what it is and there's a heated squabble happening. He knows Yasha’s gotten the message when she snarls and dogs at Lorenzo, letting him grab her by the garish collar around her neck. He doesn't expect to see Caleb inching away from them though, his form hunched and demure. Molly’s brow furrows, eyes pinching with concern when Lorenzo snatches the wizard's wrist and drags him back in. The words are too low to make out, hissed and growled and Molly sends a pointed look to Fjord who holds up the falchion, slicing a dull column of light in the dark above his head before he swings it down. 

Molly watches them all burst into action.

Nott fires a crossbow, her left hand bandaged and ring finger missing but her aim is still true. She narrowly misses hitting Caleb, the bolt striking into Lorenzo and drawing his attention from the two in his grasp. The slaver drops the wizard's wrist and Molly silently urges him to run to the tree line and away so they can handle this, but Caleb only stumbles back. Slowly, seemingly disoriented, and wild-eyed when Beau starts to throw the small, round, and awfully colorful smoke bombs they had bought from Hupperdook and reclaimed from the Nest. 

“Nott, go get your boy out of the line of fire, now!” Molly shouts, not caring about the element of surprise anymore, the shrieking and yelling from the slavers drowning him out anyways. 

The majority of the slavers have taken up their arms and run into the dark and cover of the forest, towards the popping explosions and away from the clearing. Down into where they will be picked off mercilessly one by one.

Nott nods, pulling a familiar glove free from her belt and scampering towards where Caleb has backed himself into a tree. The wizard staring, locked onto where Lorenzo is squaring off with Yasha and Molly isn't sure what he sees there, or what has him so spooked, but it's steeped in a concern that burns through him. 

The barbarian is holding her own despite the odds and Molly smirks when Yasha deflects the glaive again. “Atta girl, just hang on a bit longer," he mutters as he rounds the tree line, skirting around where he can see the others picking off the thugs and goons. 

It's all going according to plan.

Now, they just need to isolate Lorenzo and converge on him all at once. Yasha has done her part; drawing the slaver's attention so they can pick off the underlings and level the fight in their favor. Molly knows Lorenzo's the hardest one to tackle and they need to hit the bastard with everything they have before he can strike back. 

Beau snarls from the dark, off to his left, and there's the reedy notes of a pan flute followed by a flash of arcane light. 

_Fuck._

He easily leaps over the twisting roots and under the gnarled boughs, sword glimmering a soft gold at his side. He arrives to the monk trying to slam her staff down into a scowling and heavily battered halfling, his hands working frantically over his instrument. There's a burst of fire and Beau bats frantically at where her clothes have caught fire, singes creeping along the fabric and flesh an angry red over her torso. 

Molly takes a step forward, hand clenching around the hilt of his blades and he reaches for that familiar dimensional space. He blinks out of this plane and across another, until suddenly he's behind the halfling. A smirk crawls up his face and he leans down, planting the sword into the center of the slaver's back. “Boo.” 

The halfling yelps as a slice of steel rips through his front, dropping his instrument and fumbling at the curved gold metal protruding from his chest, fingers turned slick and red as he coughs and gasps. It doesn't take long before only weak, pitiful gurgles are all that's left and Molly lets the halfling slide off the blade. 

Beau glares at him, fingers clenched around her staff, the flames put out but the edges of her shirt charred and blackened. “I fucking had that one.” 

“Too bad, be quicker next time,” Molly winks and turns on his heel, taking off back into the dark. He sprints off towards where he can hear Jester shouting, sparing a breath to laugh as the monk shouts colorful obscenities at his retreating back. 

It's easy work from there as they each quickly pick off the remaining slaver's amongst the trees, until the only sound is the snarling and clang of metal from the clearing. Molly is the furthest out of them now, having chased after a stubborn piece of shit that tried to get away with his life. And while he would usually find some mercy, he can't find the heart to care right now. 

Not anymore. 

He and Shakäste had sundered the Sour Nest with a group of hopeful hires and he had seen the condition they were in. He could see from the weariness in their eyes that the visible wounds weren't the only ones eating at them. He had arrived, stalking into that blood steeped lair, fearful of what he might find. Quick work was made of the paltry collection of slavers up top, and of a cleric who begged to be spared in exchange for information. And while Molly honored his word, he left him tied up in the dining area, to find his own way out of his bonds or starve inches from a slowly rotting meal. Shakäste had followed him down after that and the thugs, whom they had offered a share of the spoils from the slaver's funds to, followed close behind. 

He rememebers the sounds of screaming had hurried his steps, recalls arriving to a harrowing scene. A snarling half-orc leaned over a very familiar goblin, with a bloodied knife sliced into her hand and a limp finger on the ground. And Molly cut off every single one of that half-orc’s fingers before killing her. Uncharacteristic sadism stemming from a white hot fury as Nott had clutched at her freed hand, stared emptily at the missing digit. Eyes lost and almost confused, like her brain hadn't been able to process it was gone yet. 

 

He will offer no mercy to Lorenzo here either. 

None of these slaver's deserved an ounce of it. 

 

All too soon, he can see the others are all half-ringed around the towering fiend Lorenzo has become. His skin morphed into a grotesque bulbous blue, spittle flying from his jowls as he snarls at each of them. 

Molly isn't surprised the slaver isn't human. Isn't phased by the beast crawling beneath his skin, because it's almost fitting really. Still within the tree line, he finally makes it to the edge of the clearing when Lorenzo snarls out a tired line about them all being pathetic insects and Molly sneers. 

How quaint. 

He waits for an opening, for some kind of dramatics to this. He wants to see the creep of fear in Lorenzo's eyes at the sight of a ghost. The signs comes in the form of Shakaste, as the fire is knocked down by an unnatural gust that sweeps across the clearing. Molly emerges from the tree line just as the logs collapse and sparks spit up into the sky in an embered cough. 

He slides the blade across the back of his neck, lips lifted into a snarl, eyes narrowed. Staring down the slaver, radiant light bursting forth and bathing him in its fury. He stalks towards the looming slaver, and he can see Yasha falter out of the corner of his eye, the sword dipping down, striking the earth, and there's a startled inhale of air somewhere behind him, but his eyes are locked onto those mirroring pools of red. 

“That's funny, because the only pathetic thing I see here is _you_ ,” he bites out, unafraid even with the shine of the glaive before him. 

He's filled with a righteous vindictiveness and the twisting scars of silver over his sternum _burn_. Lorenzo’s face actually falters and Molly is absolutely delighted by the confused creases there. “What's the matter? You look like you've seen a ghost?” He taunts, beckoning the slaver’s wrath further. 

Lorenzo’s eyes turn wild. “You're supposed to be dead. I _killed_ you.”

Molly laughs, eyes sliding along the glaive, head cocking.“Well, you obviously didn't do a very good job.”

Lorenzo's fists tighten around it, to the point it creaks dangerously. “I'll just make sure you _stay_ dead this time.” 

“You can certainly try,” Molly smirks, twirling his blade, shifting his stance, and brandishing the luminescent steel before him. 

He can hear the others shift into formation around him, preparing their own attacks. And even Yasha seems to have recovered from her shock, a fierce light burning in her eyes. 

Keg makes the first strike, slamming her axe into Lorenzo's leg and batting away the glaive swung down at her with her war hammer. 

It starts to blur after that.Into a whirlwind of vengeance and fury, and a need for him and all of those alongside him to rip this monster to shreds so he can't hurt anyone else. There's blood lust in the grind of his clenched teeth and the silver light playing across his skin from the moon above beckons him to seize this justice.

And there's small moments, glimpses of his friends own fury and anger that stick in his head as they all lay into the slaver. The image of Jester sending a spectral lollipop, coated in razors of hard candy, slamming into the back of Lorenzo's head, her lip distorted in an uncharacteristic snarl. Of Fjord beside her, sending a blast of eldritch energy careening into the blubbery side. The force of it sending Lorenzo stumbling back into the smoldering logs where they hiss and sear at his feet. Of Beau slamming a fist into the side of his jaw, teeth grit to the edge of popping and eyes bloodshot with an unleashed feralness.Of Shakäste and Caduceus keeping them topped up as they take swipes and catch the edge of the glaive. The two of them using their respective gods divinity to summon their wrath upon the slaver . 

And it continues like that for some time, they each keep landing blow after blow on Lorenzo and soon enough there's blood trailing down the back of Molly's neck, along his arms, and from the eyes in the tattoos. And he knows he'll need to clean this damn coat again when he's done.

He dances back from a wide glaive swipe, putting some distance between him and the slaver, eyes darting to Nott when he hears the clack of a crossbow firing. She's in front of Caleb now, bristling and protective of the wizard behind her, and Molly can see that the wizard in question is staring at him, pale-faced, like he's seen the dead walk. Caleb has his fingers clutched into the hem of the glove of blasting and his eyes dart from him to the snarling Lorenzo, pressing further into the tree behind him with each ripping growl. 

Molly turns his head when a familiar cold chill bites at his cheek. He sees Lorenzo moving his free hand, a swirl of frosted energy building before it, and he knows exactly what that is. The tiefling’s eyes widen and he races forward to grab at Beau, who's preparing to slam her fist into Lorenzo's face. He manages to snag the back of her ridiculous reversible coat and she thrashes, but he only has a millisecond before that ice comes crawling towards them. He shoves her as hard as he can, away from Lorenzo and him, knowing that if anyone is going to secure this fight, if it goes to absolute shit, it will be her.

He's left, staring down the growing cascade of fractals and he hopes they can finish this without him. The flash of blue and white tears across his vision and----

The cold never comes, it skitters to the tip of his boots and fizzles out, fading with the visceral, hair-raising roar that the slaver lets out. 

Molly looks up to see Lorenzo clutching at the new stump his right hand has become and Yasha is there, chest heaving in barrel deep huffs of air and trembling. Eyes shiny amongst the pure unadulterated rage as she stands before Lorenzo, the severed hand half curled at her feet and the Magician's Judge glistening in the moonlight in an arc of silver.

There's a spark of true, primal fear in Lorenzo's eyes now, his pride and ego worn down by an animalistic need to survive and Molly slashes out with his sword at the slaver's gut just as the blue skin starts to ripple and vanish. The radiant light sears into the slaver's hide, sprouting from the gash the sword carves into it, but it isn't enough and the slaver is starting to vanish. His lips twisting into a knowing smirk and if he turns invisible now, Molly knows they most definitely will lose their chance at defeating him. Takes another wild swing at the slaver as more of him starts to dissapear into nothing. He can't let Lorenzo get away-- not now, not after everything they've---

There's a sudden, sharp whistle over head and three scorching rays of fire slam into Lorenzo. Two pummeling into his torso and one driving into the back of his skull. The half invisible flesh starts to ignite, fire eating up into him and out between his ribs. It turns visible again and Molly takes a stumbling step back. The meat turns glassy and viscous, sloughing off the bone in waxy, charred chunks, turning into furls of curled ash as they strike the dirt. Lorenzo stumbles to one knee, clutching at the fire devouring his chest and crawling up towards his neck. His eyes narrowed, locked onto something to Molly's left. The tiefling glances from the dying fiend to see Caleb; his arm outstretched, fingers tight on the glove around his trembling hand. 

“You _can't_ kill me,” Lorenzo coughs out, and it comes out as ash and embers, curling up into the sky. 

Lorenzo stares at Caleb even as the fire crawls into his cheeks, even as it singes away the flesh there. His teeth shine through the blackened and sloughing sinew and Molly recoils at the sight, stomach twisting unpleasantly at the skeletal smile stretching the slaver's distorted features.

The wizard is looking at the burning slaver and it's nothing like the vacant stare he's had before. The one Molly would recognize from when he had to comfort or drag him away from charred bodies with the help of Beau. 

This is different. 

The wizard is fully present, but his eyes are glassy and they're filled with a brimming reflection of oranges from the flames eating at the slaver. 

“You can't k-” 

Caleb drives his fist into the slaver's skull, cutting off Lorenzo's next dying words as it crumbles inwards. Spitting ash around the wizard's fist as the slaver slumps backwards and crumbles into charred bone. 

But Caleb doesn't stop there. 

Beau rushes forward and he goes with her. The angry pockmarks of red flesh starting up along the wizard's arm from where he's pummeling into the still smoldering pile driving Molly to join her. He siezes one arm; the wizard's knuckles dusted in charcoal, bloody, and bruised where he flails against him. Drags Caleb back with Beau' s help, and he struggles against them the entire way, a cut off shout and near gibberish falling from his lips until there's just a cut off whimper and deafening silence as Caleb slumps in their arms. Molly meets the monk's eyes over Caleb's head. The look in her eyes mirrors his in that moment.

He doesn't even know how Caleb managed to find the strength to do anything. He's practically all bone and he's alarmingly, dangerously light as they hold him up where he's gone alarmingly still and quiet. Caleb having given up trying to escape it seems, trembling and panting, but it doesn't assuage Molly's growing trepidation. 

He looks around for the others, still holding the listless wizard up, and sees Yasha.

She's peering down at the charred corpse, Lorenzo's severed hand in hers. Her shoulders seem less tense, her face nearly blank. Like the aftermath of a storm, when the quiet settles over the rain marked earth and ozone still blankets the air as a reminder. She lets the hand slip from hers and it tumbles into the cinders where the low burning embers start to eat at it. Black-red blood stains her palm and she reaches up to the collar around her throat. The runes flare a garish green and it clicks open with a quiet pop. She huffs out a breath, dropping it into the ashes as well, back straightening, like there's a weight gone from them that he hadn't even noticed before. 

She turns to him and he smiles, unsure what to say. She smiles back, and it's as reserved and small. It's everything he remembers it being and he's never been more glad to be alive than he is when he sees that hint of a dimple pressed into her left cheek. Her eyes dart down to the wizard he's keeping hoisted up and her smile falls, softened look closing off. She kneels down, blood slicked hand prying off Caleb's collar as well as she gently cradles her arms under his legs and back. Lifting him easily and out of Molly's grasp, like Caleb weighs nothing more than the scattered ash nearby. 

“Let's get out of here,” she says, and her voice is barely a breathe. 

Molly nods. He would like nothing more than to get away from this place.The glint of a forgotten glaive chases him out of the corner of his eye as he follows Yasha.

 

 

\------------

 

 

It is still the thick of night when they finally settle around the disguised carts. The moons high and glaring in the sheet of dappled black and starlight overhead. 

Yasha props Caleb up against one of the wheels and the fact that the wizard still hasn't said anything sends Molly's gut twinging. He tries to go over and smooth out his ruffled hair, almost reflexively-- itching to soothe away whatever is eating at the wizard, but Yasha stops him with gentle fingers and a pointed look, only dropping his wrist when he backs off. 

At a loss for what to do he taps his foot, tail flicking and worrying his lip between his teeth.

_Fuck it._

He decides to sit close by at least, keeping a comfortable amount of space between him and the vacant wizard. Nervously shuffling the tarot cards they had found among the stash of their stowed, and somewhat abused belongings in the Sour Nest. 

He still hasn't asked any of them why he wasn't buried with the deck, all except the moon card at least, and he probably never will.

He lays them out in front of his crossed legs, idly listening to the others talk and meander about To Fjord and Beau discussing the best way to get the slaves out and to Nott protesting she can still get the locks open, she just needs time. 

His eyes dart to Caleb when he hears a sharp inhale. But the wizard is just staring up at the moon and Molly can't tell if he's looking past it or into it. He says nothing, if Caleb wants to talk he can, but he won't force him, Yasha made it clear not to push his limits and he can respect that at least. 

He draws a card, flipping it over onto the dirt and he stares at it. He's not sure who he's drawing for here, he's just doing it out habit, and for something to do with his hands while he waits, but the Death card glares back at him; reversed. He knows it's not always so literal, that the cards are tied in metaphor and figurative meaning, but it's poignant, surreal even. 

He flips another. 

And it's the Ten of Swords. 

Molly’s brow furrows. He's not sure what they are trying to tell him this time, the question he really wants answered here still escaping his grasp. He flips the last one and huffs out an amused breath when he sees what it is.

Now he knows the cards are just dicking around. The Ace of Cups glares back at him, moonlight glinting off the used curl of the corner. He snatches the cards back up, shaking his head, and going back to shuffling them idly, perturbed by the strange drawing. 

He turns to see that Caleb has conked out against the wheel, head tilted back, eyes slipped shut and jaw slack. There's a tension settled across his frame that hasn't left him even in the throes of sleep and Molly frowns.

Molly can't help but what's going on in that head of his as his eyes twitch and skitter behind the closed lids. The wizard starts to list to the side and Molly catches him, grabbing his upper arm with gentle fingers and righting him, quickly letting go when Caleb tenses and shifts under his grip, a low, distressed whine slipping from the wizards lips.

Molly dutifully ignores it, quickly releasing him and shifting out of his coat, fully aware that there's still drying blood lining the sleeves, coating his white undershirt, and dried along the glaring eye tattoos littering him. But he doesn't really care as he carefully folds it up and places it on the ground and gently guides the sleeping wizard down to use it as a makeshift pillow so Caleb won't accidentally brain himself on the ground while he tries to catch some sleep. 

And gods, does he look like he needs it. 

_Desperately_. 

There's deep blue-black and purple rings hollowing the wizard's eyes and Molly thinks a stiff breeze could probably sweep him away. He wonders how much they were fed, how much they were allowed to sleep, what exactly was done to them in that place, how he's supposed to help here when he barely knows what he's dealing with. Yasha wanders over, quiet and subdued, the Magician's Judge back in its rightful place, sheathed on her back. And she's wearing a new set of armor, the tattered ripped clothes from before gone. She looks down at Caleb, eyes softening, but there's a frown on her face, arms crossed and Molly would bet his soul that it's guilt he sees there if only because he's seen it on her before. 

“Have you ever…,” she starts and pauses, searching for the right way to say it, “Have you ever done something you thought was right in the moment, but it turned out to be the wrong thing to do?” She finally asks, voice quiet. 

Molly tilts his head, thinking. He doesn't really have any such singular regrets like that. He can't name any off the top of his head, but he also doesn't have as long of memories as his companions. One day he might truly regret something, but not yet. 

“No, can't say I have.”

She grimaces, but it's gone in an instant.“I do-- I mean, I did....I did something that I wish I could take back, but I also-- I don't-- maybe…maybe this was the best outcome. I don't know...,” Her voice trails off and halts in familiar hushed sentences and she ducks her head. 

He stares up at her, fingers thumbing the edge of his tarot deck and wondering what has her so conflicted. “Well it's the _only_ outcome we have. Considering you can't exactly change the past. You just have to live with it.” 

Or in his case ignore it and run from it. Send a big vindictive ‘fuck you’ its way whenever possible. But he's pretty sure Yasha doesn't need to hear about how to disregard her past right now. 

“I just... I want to take it back now that I've seen the cost of it, but I can't. And I don't…. I don't know what to do,” She's looks at Caleb as she says it, her chopped up hair shining in the throes of moonlight and glittering across her too pale skin. 

He wants to pluck out whatever's swimming there and weighing down his friend's shoulders and burden it on himself, but he can tell by the way she's crossing her arms, fingers clinging to her own biceps, that she doesn't want to elaborate on what's eating at her just yet. 

He offers the next best thing he can. Some well intentioned advice. “Well, you can't take it back now that it's done. That's not how decisions work.” 

She frowns, eyes darting to her feet and away from Caleb, and he feels like he's said the wrong thing when she goes still and rigid. 

“I know,” she finally says after a moment.

Molly frowns and he wonders just what happened that has her so frazzled and tense. 

“But you _can_ learn to live with them,” he settles on after a pause. Watching her brows flicker down at his words, like it's still not the answer she wanted here and he's starting to flounder a bit.

She feels almost like a stranger right now and he's a bit put off. It's nearly-- as if, he maybe-- perhaps, doesn't know her as well as he thought he did. And he wants to know what happened in the bowels of that dungeon, but he also never wants to hear the answer. 

“Yeah…,” she looks away from Caleb, back to where Beau and Fjord are bickering again. 

He was only away from them for barely two weeks and alive days after dying. Yet, he feels like he's missed an eternity here. He's only had a brief amount of time to really observe any of them, or even talk with them since busting them out, but they all hold this weight on their shoulders that he doesn't share now, and he would be lying through his teeth if he didn't admit, it makes him feel a bit like the outsider here. 

“Yasha,” Molly starts, wanting to distract her from whatever's troubling her any way he can. A smile settling on the corner of his lips, “I'm glad you're okay.” 

Yasha lips twitch up, the tension still there, but covered up for his sake, and he can't help but feel a bit guilty about that. “I'm glad you're okay too.” 

They lull into a comfortable silence, Yasha sitting on the other side of Caleb, the sleeping wizard curled up between them, his hand having fisted into the discarded coat, made pillow, like its a life line. 

“You'll let me fix up your hair right?” Molly pipes up, smile sharp and amused. 

Yasha breathes out a laugh, nodding her head and leaning back against the cart to stare up at the moon alongside him. 

 

 

 

 

 

\------------------------  
\------------------------

Caleb wakes up to the occasional shifting of a wooden cart beneath him. 

His head is pillowed on a strange mixture of textures and fabrics. The trace of blood amongst the smell of worn cotton and a hint of something almost floral is a strange mixture and he blinks, suddem sunlight sending him wincing back and squinting. There's the faint trace of ash in his mouth that he grimaces at, and his right fist feels like it's covered in fire ants. 

For a stomach dropping moment he's not sure where he is, but there's familiar voices chattering around him and there's no ring of metal biting into his throat. It still doesn't stop his nerves from skittering, back entirely exposed and vulnerable to the open air. He shuffles back so he's pressed flush against the wooden side of the cart, fingers dug into the fabric folded beneath his cheek, and peering out at the world from under his lashes, muscles tensed and ears perked for any advancement. 

Apparently, someone notices he's awake finally because they crow loudly from their side of the cart. “Oh, Caleb! Caleb's awake you guys! Caleeeeb, how are you feeling?" He winces back from the sheer enthusiasm in the heavily accented voice, blinking up at the face of a blue tiefling leaning over him, her face comically haloed by the sunlight. He doesn't answer, at a loss for words and heart leaping its way up his throat as he tries to recall how he got here. It's hard to remember things straight somehow. The pictures are all there, crystal clear and perfect, but they aren't archived properly. Like unshelved books, and he's neglected to sort them out just yet. 

“I-- uh---,” Caleb stutters, mouth dry and fumbling. 

A lavender hand draws the blue tiefling back by her shoulder and she goes reluctantly, a pout on her lips. “Don't crowd him just yet. The poor man just got up,” and it's a lilting voice that matches the amused face. He's missing his coat, but he would have to be blind not to recognize Mollymauk Tealeaf. There's an uncomfortable sensation, the niggling of nerves down his spine when the tiefling tilts his head and smiles-- like Caleb's forgotten something important here. 

“Nott! Caleb's awake!” Jester shouts from the edge of the cart, waving her arms. Caleb leverages himself up to his elbows, cautiously scanning the cart. It seems as if the iron cages have been pushed from the carts and they're now filled with huddled people. The one he is in is, thankfully, one of the sparsely populated it seems. 

He sits up fully, fingers fumbling in the patchwork of whatever was his pillow and he looks down to see a familiar coat. There's memories dancing right along the edges of him, but he doesn't really want to draw and prod at them right now. Molly extends his hand and Caleb stares at it, something keeps telling him it shouldn't exist and he can't help but be put off by the thought. 

“Unless you want to keep it?” And he realizes Molly's referring to the coat caught in his hands. 

He pries his fingers out of where they've looped into one of the tied sections, handing it over. The tiefling plucks it easily from him, grinning and donning it with a flourish. 

“Don't worry, we got your own coat back for you,” Molly rummages in the pink haversack Jester left discarded against the side of the cart. 

When Molly pulls it free Caleb has to resist the urge to snatch it out of the tiefling's hands. He wants nothing more than to wrap himself in it, but he waits until it's draped across his waiting arms. Inspects the heavily weathered, and frankly busted up, road coat and Caleb doesn't think he's seen anything more precious in all his life. 

He slips it on, huddling into the warmth it presses into his skin, pulling the collar up to muff his ears as he tucks into it. And it smells like him-- no one else. 

“We couldn't save your scarf though,” Molly apologizes and Caleb viscerally recalls it being slashed to ribbons with a glaive that slashed across his chest.He doesn't try to push past that thought, head pounding and heart skittering as he fists his fingers into the fur lining amd pulls the coat tighter across his shoulders. 

He still can't remember why his right hand and forearm smart like they've been dipped in acid, nor why there's the tinges of ash and soot in his hair and settled on his skin. He doesn't have time to stop and think about it, occupied by a small green blur bowling into his side. 

“Caleb!” 

He reflexively wraps his arms around her, instincts dictating he flinch away, but he overrides it, smothering it in lieu of the familiar, scratchy voice. Nott buries her face into his side and there's a happy wiggle in her ears and he feels a twitch in his lips at the sight of it. 

His brow furrows at the tugging under his sternum, like smooth, satin red, threatening to crush him at the sight of her face when she looks up at him, but he disconnects from it. They were just a nightmare. They snap and writhe anyways, like they'll find a way to leap forward and grab him.

At a loss for words and with a growing lump in his throat, he draws her into another hug and catches Molly grinning at him from over Nott's shoulder. Jester returns from behind the tiefling, wobbling and unsteady on the moving cart, but determined all the same. She has a pair of books in her hands, singed and weathered, but he recognizes them. She holds them out like an offering, grinning from ear to ear as she sits down, dress flaring out around her. 

Nott wriggles out of the hug, turning to snatch one of them and handing it over instead. Caleb blinks, swallowing heavily, hiding the tremble in his hand by balling it against his thigh. There's an odd amount of attention on him here, and he can't put his finger om the reason the weird gifting that's happening is somehow unnerving at it's core. 

They look happy and carefree, delighted to see he's up, but there's a tightnsss in all of their smiles. Their offerings feeling more like apologies and atonements somehow. And Nott is hiding her left hand, keeping it in the folds of her cloaks and he doesn't know what that's about. He frowns, brow scrunching. He _knows_ there's something he should remember about it, but there's a book shoved under his nose and Nott grins far too wide at him from over it.

Caleb accepts both of them, running his hands over the covers, brow furrowing further, jaw clenching when he sees the round burn marks pressed into the leather. The singes on the edges send him frowning too. It looks like someone held them over a fire, but thought better of the act and didn't go through with burning them. He flips it open, fingers already seeking a specific page before he realizes it. 

He gets to that section of the book and he can't find it. He flips the page, flips it again, folds the parchment back, runs his finger along the torn seam and clenches his teeth. Eyes pricking, face hot. 

It's not here. He flips the page again, listens to the sift of parchment, stares at the ragged, deckled remains of the page and feels his gut drop. 

They tore it out. 

“What's wrong?” Nott asks, hand covering his. He looks to the one she's still hiding, but he doesn't comment, just brushes her off and runs his fingers down the torn out spine left in the tome.

“They took it.” 

“Took what?” And it's Molly this time, head tilted, seated on the edge of the cart. 

“Frumpkin.”

Nott pales at the realization, flipping the book around and thumbing through it with one hand. She knows the pages almost as well he does by now and he watches her flip through it the same way he did.

“Shit,” she hisses after a moment.

“Wait, wait what are you talking about?” Jester asks, faltering in her previously sunny demeanor. 

“They took the fucking spell out,” Nott bites out. 

“Can we find another? Is that a thing you can do?” Molly is drumming his fingers on the side of the cart and it sticks in Caleb's head with each thumping beat. 

“I mean yeah- sure, but it's gonna cost a shit ton of money and time to find a scroll with that spell on it to be able to copy it down in here,” Nott holds up the book, still keeping one hand hidden-- and Caleb has the insatiable urge to reach out and grab the concealed one and figure out what she's keeping from him. 

“Dammit,” Jester bites out and he can see she's frustrated now, hands balled into fists on her thighs. “I'm sorry Caleb we were just trying to cheer you up and I thought getting your spell books back would help and I didn't think they would have torn anything out if they didn't already burn them and I'll help you pay for that scroll thingy. I'll help you get Frumpkin back, I swear.” 

He blinks dumby at the sudden rush of words. He doesn't know why she's so frenetic about helping him. There's something drawn about the way she's looking at him, like she wants to desperately repay him for something he can't recall ever doing for her.

“It's fine, Jester,” the words leave his mouth automatically, reflexively. 

Jester’s brow furrows and she's frowning, and that's not something he remembers being there either. 

Molly claps his hands together, distracting them all from the solemn news, “Well, I'm sure we'll figure something out eventually, just gotta keep our eyes peeled for--” 

The cart lurches, dipping into a hole in the road and sending it rocking. The tiefling stumbles, but catches himself, Nott, however, wobbles and falls, catching herself with _both_ hands, and Caleb stares numbly at the bandages swaddling her revealed left hand. There's a high, ringing whine in his ears. A phantom cracking and skittering along the barrier keeping all the coiled hissing things at bay before it shatters, spilling out a black muck as it gives. 

Her finger is missing.

He remembers why. 

He wishes he didn't. 

Someone's talking to him-- a hand on his shoulder, another is shaking him-- but he can't climb his way back out of the undertow.

 

\------------------

 

_The tiefling stalks into the clearing, his coat flaring out behind him, and words dripping with vengeful venom._

_Caleb can't hear him though._

_He's too busy reeling, sure he's seeing a ghost and that he's finally snapped, but Yasha falters at the sight of him too. And Caleb’s never been happier to see that stupid, gaudy coat in all of his existence even if it's draped on a walking spectre._

_The battle with Lorenzo starts and he can only watch, stuck to the bark digging into his back. Nott positions herself between him and the slaver and he wants to shove her behind him. Keep her safe and ensure that she can't be hurt, but he can't bring himself to take a step in that direction right now._

_His attention is torn between the fearful visage of a snarling demon and the ghost stalking the battlefield._

_The ghost's eyes meet his briefly and they are blood-filled and far too alive. Shifting and wavering in the fire light. He stares into them and he thinks he sees death; it's all bone smiles and skeletal fingers curling over and around them._

_There's a flicker of blue and ice, and he's peering down the very reason he was locked in a cell in the first place. The reason his stomach is raw and bloodied with hunger, the reason he can't look at food without thinking about what he's been willing to trade for it. The reason he can't look at the goblin standing in front of him, the reason he can't look the barbarian in the eyes, the reason he wants to curl up in the darkest corner and be swallowed up by its comforting shadow, because at least it's safe, at least it's predictable._

_Yasha severs the hand at the root and Caleb wants to laugh._

_He didn't know it could be so easy._

_Such a trite act to take away the thing that helped rip him apart. That bared his soul and flesh, tore over every inch of him with ragged nails and leathery skin. It is gone in an instant and he stares down at the limp hand. Where its curled up in the dirt, inert and unable to touch him ever again, but the sight of it, even blue and warped, monstrous and entirely inhuman, makes him want to heave._

_The slaver starts to disappear and there's a licking burn under his ribs.He watches the ghost slash at it, but it doesn't go down and Caleb raises his hand before he thinks better of it, fingers splaying as he walks forward. Numbly, limbs jerky as they pull him past the goblin and the others, until he's close enough he can't possibly miss and he snaps the leather glove tight with his other hand._

_Three, whistling rays of fire race towards the slaver and he watches them slam into the thick hide. Something _howls_ under his ribs, rearing its head and slobbering, digging its claws in, dragging itself forward, desperate and hungry, and he feels his feet moving nearly against his will. _

_He's burning, igniting beneath the same inferno that eats at the slaver's skin and bites into his flesh. And that thing in him bares its teeth, snaps its jaws, and he's shaking, fists trembling, bare feet curled into the dirt-- and he wants to watch Lorenzo burn. Wants to watch it all burn--_

_The red eyes, ringed by the beginnings of charcoaled flesh, bore into him. “You can't kill me,” it rattles and the threat curls up into the sky. _And Caleb knows he can't._ _

__

__

_He knows he can't kill that festering stalking image in his head or even the feeling of hands on him, the memories, the idea and the image, the taste and the smell-- the blood, but he can kill this physical thing._

_He's even closer now and the eyes are melting out of the skull as it goes to choke out another of its threats. And that animal, that thing he kept chained and compliant for Nott’s sake, for his own sake. That anger, the injustice of it, the fear of it that he kept tamed and quiet, demere while underneath this thing-- under this monster that still spits and snarls at him, even on its knees and burning-- leaps forward, and Caleb buries his knuckles into the slaver's crumbling skull._

_It shatters into ash and dust around his fist and it sears into his flesh, the bite crackling up his arm and he wants _more of it. He follows the crumbling monolith of charred bones down, sinks his fist into it again, and again, and again. He tries to shove every ounce of it all back into that sundered skull, tries to pummel the memories and the feelings and the disgusting muck of it back down into the embers that snap back with a curling heat, pushes it down where it can all just die._ _

__

__

_He wants it out of him, he wants it gone, he doesn't want to feel this anymore and he thinks if he keeps going he might eventually get it all out._

_But hands grab at him and he kicks and thrashes._

_He needs to get it out, needs to tear it out of him and bury it in those smoldering ruins and the thing in him screams its lament, but he just goes quiet, stops fighting them, drained and limp, staring at the crumbled corpse._

_It doesn't feel any better._

_He thought it would feel better if he did it, but it _doesn't_ and the only thing that's left in its wake is this gaping terrible wasteland. _

_He doesn't remember much after that. He thinks he keeps seeing the ghost but his world is numb and grey and it's hard to think._

____

__

__\--- --- ----------- -----------__

__  


__

He snaps to and he's curled into the corner of the wooden cart, hands over his ears, and Yasha standing with her back to him, shielding him from the others standing just beyond-- and they're all just looking at him. Peering and seeking past her towards him, and into him, and he doesn't know how to explain this. 

__

The ghost--- Molly is the first one that seems to notice he's back and his eyes flicker to Yasha. Caleb can't see her face, but he doesn't have to to know she's angry about something. There's a tension rolled over her shoulders and he wonders what has her riled up. 

He's not sure how much time has passed but it can't be much. The spellbooks have fallen to the floor of the cart and Nott is sitting where she fell, hiding her hand again, face pinched, ears pressed back, eyes wide. Jester is watching him too, retreated further away, but he doesn't think she's gotten up either. 

“Yasha. I think he's back now,” Molly says carefully, hands held out, palms up and calm, like he's trying to soothe a feral animal rather than a person. 

Yasha shifts, glances over her shoulder and Caleb’s eyes dart away the second he sees a flash of stormy purple from over one of them. The cart wobbles and rocks as she moves and eventually she's sitting in front of him, facing him, and he yet he still can't look up at her. 

The ash in his mouth has a new context to it and he can feel his throat spasm, bile trying to escape the seam of his lips and he bites it back. Pants heavily in th e wake of the nausea, sides heaving as he hunches into himself, shaking fingers reaching up to tug through his hair. His scalp singing unpleasantly at the sensation and he's forced to retreat them back into the collar of his coat.

No one stops him, no one says anything to him when he pulls his knees up and rests his forehead against them. No one stops him as he hides there and tries to collect his breath and some semblance of thought. 

The cart resumes its movement after a moment. 

He doesn't look up until it stops again and by then the eyes are gone. There's a tavern and he's not sure what town they are even in. 

He doesn't really have the energy to care. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Discord: Ara#6309   
> Tumblr: trashofboat


	10. Freed...and Falling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Bad headspace Caleb warnings-
> 
> -breif self harm mention

They collect themselves in the softly lit bowels of a tavern. 

The bar hand drops a round off at the colorful table with a nervous smile, there's something familair about him, but Caleb can't place it. Beau and Nott slam them back with a speed and ferocity that's almost concerning and the two are well into smashed within the hour. 

There's ash still dusting his knuckles and clinging to his clothes and he's sat in a far corner table. Away from the rest of them, letting the two walls flank him so he has a protected view of the whole tavern area and nothing but wood to his back. 

He watches Mollymauk pull tarot cards for Jester, watches him laugh, his face ruddy with alcohol and the prismatic coat clinging to him like it never left and he still doesn't know how to process that. Caduceus has joined Nott and Beau in their drinking contest, sniffing at the glass the monk slides to him. He manages to get one down and folds, sputtering and coughing against the burn of it, but smiling and chuckling all the same. Fjord and Yasha are talking, quiet and hushed at a table, pushed up next to the one reserved for drinking and cards, and Keg is across from them with Shakäste next to her. The dwarf is speaking with the cleric, the medallion usually hanging from her hammer clutched in her fist, the warped edges from where it had been melted and abused by the slavers neglect is glaring. Shakäste extends a hand, taking it and muttering. Caleb can just barely make out the metal straightening and righting itself back to its original form and there's a shine in Keg’s eyes as she takes it back and stares down at it. He has to look away when the dwarf bows her head, clasping it in reverent hands, pressing it to her forehead and muttering, tears tracking their way down into her unkempt beard in the candlelight. 

Yasha has gotten up from the table and made her way to where Mollymauk is laughing, raucous and loud, like he never left them. Jester is hanging off his shoulder, their tails twisting and flicking like pleased cats as they grin and squabble about something only they know, and as Yasha approaches Jester takes her cue and bounds off to drape herself across Fjord’s shoulder instead, grinning at a ruddy-cheeked Beau across the way who grins back. The half-orc smiles, softly batting the tiefling's hand away as Jester ruffles his hair and snatches up the milk she specially ordered, boisterous and colorful as ever where she takes a seat beside Fjord and cheers on a now slightly swaying Beauregard. 

And it's all so very normal.

Bar the occasional negligible bruise and wound littering some of them from the battle--they are free, whole, and fed. They seem so happy and healthy and very much _alive_. 

But in his far corner, where the shadows stand tallest, and the candlelight doesn't reach quite fully he feels like he never made it out of that cell. Like a part of him is still chained up back there, trapped in a bedroom filled with satin sheets and searching hands and a canvas tent beneath dead-eyed stars. 

And maybe he envies them.

The ease with which they have slipped back into normalcy with only the occasional slip up. Only the occasional and fleeting uncomfortable grimace when someone grabs their wrist or an idle hand rubbing at their throat where a circle of metal used to sit. 

He doesn't know how they do it and he feels stupid for it, silly and melancholic, over dramatic-- like it should be easy to shed all of it off and slip back into his old skin now that it's all over and Lorenzo is dead. 

But he can't and he's angry at himself for being caught up in this, for letting this weigh on him so heavily when he can see Yasha talking and walking, moving about the others so normally. He's angry at himself for letting the shadows gnaw at his ankles and that bassy voice stick in his head when she's as stalwart and sentinel as ever-- and he doesn't know why it it's like this for him and not her. He doesn't know why it's slopping around in his head and against his skin so thickly. 

Someone pulls a chair out across from him, the slide of the legs against the floor a loud and screeching squeal and it sends his attention skittering. He looks up from where he has worried a small groove into the table with his thumb and Molly is sitting across from him now, head tilted, solid red eyes waiting for something. 

Caleb clears his throat, shifting in his seat, unnerved under any amount of attention right now. It had been easy to interact with them all in the cart when the things had been held at bay and he had forgotten them for a blissful moment. Now it feels like he's sloughing his way through a swamp, scaled and slit-eyed things slithering beneath the murk as he tries to reach them on the farthest patch of sturdy ground. 

The first thing that comes to mind leaves him in a hoarse and halted whisper. A surprised little thing that had eaten at him since he saw Molly emerge like a wraith from the dark and drag a blade across his skin. 

“You lived..” 

Molly smirks. “So did you.” 

“ _Ja_ ,” he breathes out, but it's smothered underneath a cynical chuckle, “I did.” 

Maybe he didn't.

Maybe he didn't make it out alive, and he doesn't know how long it will take them to realise he's just a phantom walking among them. Translucent and only a reflection of a memory. He doesn't know how long it'll take them to confront him about it and he's terrified of the thought. 

He doesn't miss the way Molly frowns at him after that. 

And Caleb can't help staring at him, it still feels like he's looking at a ghost. He still knows what it looked like when those eyes were empty and solid with nothing but oblivion. He remembers the tinge of ruddy red beneath the lavender turned a lilac white, the rosy life of of it drained from the gaping tear through his sternum. The same tear that's been sewn up with threading scars of knotting silver, shining softly in the candle's glow and clasped over his heart like fingers. He knows exactly where a new patch has been hewn into the back of that coat too, colorful and swirling with reflective crescent moons. He remembers seeing it amongst the winding tapestry in the firelight as he cut across Lorenzo’s torso. 

“What are you sitting all the way over here for?”

Caleb worries at the table again, digging his nail into another groove, and pulling at the worn wood. 

“Perspective,” he breathes after a moment, and he's not sure if it's entirely true or what it really means when he says it, it just comes out and he doesn't try to stop it.

“On what?”

“I-... I do not know yet.”

“Well, let me know when you find out then." Molly pats the top of his hand, the one with the now healed brand and Caleb withdraws from the casual brush of fingers. 

Molly didn't even flinch at the feeling of it and Caleb tries to focus on how the tiefling’s fingers are warm and real, tangible, and no longer cold and rigid with rigor mortis, rather than the unease even a simple, comforting gesture planted in his stomach. And Caleb stares at him, unsure what to say as the tiefling nurses his drink. There's flowers braided into his hair and he's not sure if they are Yasha’s doing or Nott’s. They are small and white, droplets of snow against his hair and he finds himself tracing them like constellations, searching for something to distract himself from the empty void lapping at his feet. 

He has so many questions bouncing around in his head and he plucks the most obvious one from the air to distract himself and distract the watchful tiefling from the way his hands tremble against the wood. 

“What…,” he picks at his nails, nerves pricking under the scrutiny, “what was it like?” 

“What was what like?” The lilting accent is far more pronounced, the question lazily slurred, brow cocked. 

Caleb turns to inspect the table again. He doesn't want to say it out loud. Unsure if he's overstepping some unspoken boundary and he doesn't really know how to articulate the thing dancing along the edge of his tongue, but he needs a distraction from the things he doesn't want to dwell on just yet. 

“You mean dying, right?” 

His head snaps up, but he says nothing and the tiefling looks more amused than annoyed by his silence.

“Jester already asked, don't worry." Molly sets the drink down, fingers drumming against the table, propping his chin up and seeming to mull over it for a bit, tail lashing lazily behind him. 

“I don't really remember. I know it was dark and I remember the moment before it went dark. And I-” Molly pauses, brow furrowed, a hand drifting towards his sternum for a moment before he wipes away the unease with a quick smile, going back to toying with the rim of his drink. “I wasn't afraid of it. It---” he waves a hand, seemingly at a loss for how to convey the impossible thing he experienced. “It didn't feel like something to be afraid of at least.” 

The tiefling’s eyes are far away and softened, “It was just empty, and vast, and endless, but then it was cold and I looked up and saw Shakäste reaching down towards me...and I _remembered_ him.” Molly's laugh is giddy and surprised, like he still doesn't quite believe it himself. 

“That is…,”

“Impossible, I know, but the impossible seems to dog my heels.” Molly shrugs and takes a swig from his drink, downing the rest of it and waving to the person behind the counter before turning to look him over. Caleb barely resists the urge to shrink back against the searching gaze. 

He knows that most of the physical evidence has been wiped from him with a dosage of healing, but anytime someone looks a little too hard or for a little too long he swears they can see the hand shaped bruises circling his wrists and the ones beneath his clothing in places that can only he explained by one thing. 

But even he knows they aren't there anymore. 

“I won't ask, cause I know what happened to you lot was probably bloody terrible, but if you ever need an ear to talk off I'll always be here. Just let me know.” 

It's that same familiar kindness offered as always, with no reward other than the lifting of a burden from another's shoulders and Caleb doesn't know how someone so colourful and vain-looking can be so stupidly selfless. 

He just nods, unable to explain how he never can take him up on his offer. That he would never fully understand no matter how much he explains it. That he would rather drown in it than spill any of that churning muck caught behind his sternum to any of them. 

Yasha is the only one he would ever talk to about any of this, but she feels like she's miles away right now. Even as she drifts up to his corner table, her hand settling on Molly's shoulder, like she has to make sure he's still real, and Caleb still can't look her in the eyes.

He doesn't want to see that quiet knowledge of the things she saw and endured beside him. He doesn't want a reminder of those lurking hounds prowling in the dark spaces he refuses to peer into for fear of seeing their eyes flashing back at him. 

She sits and says nothing and Caleb can only sit there for a moment longer before he has to leave. Muttering excuses that are jumbled and stilted, bile inching up his throat as he pushes back from the table and stands. He thinks he hears Molly call after him, fingers almost brushing his shoulder before something stops them and he's already long gone before he can figure out what. 

 

\-----------//--------------------

 

Molly had thought their conversation was going well, but then Caleb had gotten up in a rush and he had gone to catch him and now, he is here. Shoulder caught under Yasha’s firm hand and staring confusedly at where he can see that weathered old coat disappear out of view.

He had gotten Caleb to talk a bit and he was relieved that the wizard was speaking again, if not closed off and guarded. He seemed almost distracted, like he was drifting a bit during their conversation. Sometimes the blue had focused on him or the table under his hands, but Molly wasn't sure how much he was really seeing. 

It was all very worrying. 

Molly would be lying if he said the incident in the cart didn't bother him. There was definitely something wrong and he didn't know what and no one would tell him. 

And the way Caleb had laughed and agreed that he had lived wasn't the voice of a relieved man or of a man who had escaped the clutches of death and vanquished a monster. It was the bitter laugh of a defeated one, of someone who already accepted his fate and was just waiting for that blade to fall. 

“Let him go,” Yasha murmurs from behind him and Molly gently brushes her hand off. 

He's not stupid. He knows something is wrong. He saw it in every tensed line of him but he can't place his finger on what. 

He glances over his shoulder at the barbarian, “What's eating at him so much?” 

He doesn't miss the way Yasha closes off, the way her lips thin and her eyes dart off to the left, avoiding his. “He can tell you in his own time.” 

Molly purses his lips. He doesn't like that answer. He wants to know so he can do something about it right _now_.

“We need to discuss what to do next anyways...Come on." She gently leads him back to their little gathering, sans one particular wizard, and he can't help but look towards the stairs the other had disappeared up into. 

The table is in absolute chaos when he arrives and it's a comforting whirlwind of color and sound that soothes the unease for a moment. The two at the far side are bickering again, an array of empty glasses and the remnants of their continuing battle strewn across it. Nott is standing on her chair, foot perched on the back of it and glaring down the monk across from her. He can tell it's all good-natured in the way the farce doesn't reach her eyes. 

“-- you can't drink me under the table, I own the fucking table!”

“Yeah? Well, I don't see your name on it anywhere so--” Beau slams back a shot with a sly smirk, “Guess it's mine now.” 

It's the regular chaos he's used to and he's glad to see at least some things haven't changed too much.

“Can you two stop for five seconds? We're trying to do some serious shit here," Fjord sighs, kneading at his forehead. 

“What's the matter, Fjord? Can't have a little fun?” Beau slurs, leaning heavily against the table and Molly rolls his eyes. 

“No, I just- Honestly, I really don't want to stay in this town for any longer than I have to.” 

And that's another thing. 

They're back in Shady Creek Run and he's not even sure if Caleb has recognized that yet. He hadn't uncurled from where he had shoved himself into the edge of the cart the whole way back and Yasha had hovered near him the whole time, making sure none of them got too close or too loud around him. That was an entirely new development Molly still isn't quite sure how to grasp either. 

__

_The moment Caleb saw Nott's bandaged hand Molly could see him retreat back into himself, back into somewhere far off and his eyes had gone distant---and it was a familiar look. It was the same as the one down in the mines and not the one that still haunted him from when Lorenzo had been snapped up in fire._

_It's at least somerhing he knows how to handle._

_Nott tries to rouse him from it and Jester grabs his shoulders, but Caleb only flinches back from both of them, reflexivley pushing himself into the corner of the cart and pressing away as hard as he can. A low distressed sound leaves him that makes Molly's entire chest hurt._

_He's looking at them, but he's not and Molly goes to step forward, but there's suddenly a figure in front of him and a hand on his sternum that keeps him back. He looks up the arm to see a familiar barbarian, her face carefully blank but eyes chipped with a lingering anger. Yasha maneuvers so she's in between where Jester and Nott are still frozen and staring at the shaking wizard that all but ran from them._

_“I'm sorry-- I didn't--” Nott blurts, covering the hand back up, her ears pressed back and face lined with distress._

_Yasha says nothing, just stands as a silent barrier between them and him and Molly's never seen her like this, never seen that protectiveness pitted against him before._

_There's a flicker of movement and Molly peers past Yasha to see that Caleb's eyes have cleared, but his worry doesn't leave with that dissipating fog._

__

 

“So, if y'all are done making a mess we need to talk about what to do next,” Fjord says, drumming his fingers on the table, eyes flicking to the other patrons like he's searching for something among them. 

“I can take the rest of the freed slaves back to where they may have come from,” Shakäste offers. 

Keg nods. “ Me too, I’d--" She looks to where a reunited family is tucking into a meal at the table next to them. “ I'd like to make sure they get home safe if I can.” 

The dwarf shifts guiltily and Molly wonders just how much she'll do to atone for her past. 

“Okay, so that's one problem down. Now, we only have a thousand more to cover,” Fjord sighs, kneading at his eye sockets with the heels of his palms. 

“Honestly, I'd like to find out what else might be in that slaver's den,” Molly interjects and he tries not to wince at the flinches that go through some of them. 

Jester recovers quicker than the rest, nodding excitedly, tail lashing. “Yeah, let's rob them blind!”

“If any of those-- those fuckers are still alive back there Imma-- Imma fucking kill ‘em,” He thinks Beau's very limited filter is getting even worse as time goes on and the monk lays her head on her folded arms, face starting to look a bit pale as she stumbles through her words. 

“You can't even hold your drinks let alone break someone's face right now.” 

“Shuddup, Molly, no one asked you.” 

He laughs, shrugging. “I'm just saying, for someone who brags so much maybe try and keep to your word every once in awhile.” 

“You two, _focus_.” 

“Ooo, it's a ‘Fjord focus’. Those are rare,” Nott pipes up from where she's swaying in her seat. 

There's a thunk as Fjord plants his forehead onto the table and groans.

Molly _almost_ feels bad for him, but everything about this situation feels so normal and familiar he doesn't even care to stop them. 

“It's okay Fjord, maybe they just need a _fiesta_ before we start talking strategy.”

Nott and Beau start cackling at that and Jester grins slyly around the rim of her glass. 

“I don't... get it," Caduceus mutters, brow scrunched. 

“Its okay, they're idiots, just ignore them,” Molly stage whispers to the firbolg. 

He really needed to ask how the man got his hair so pink and if it was naturally like that, but there are other matters at hand. 

“Can we please just stay on task,” Fjord sighs.

“Okay, okay, okay everyone shut up, Fjord is gonna say important leader-y stuff.” 

Fjord eyes the blue tiefling, but seems to go with it when everyone finally goes quiet. 

“Thanks, Jess.” The half-orc clears his throat. “Now, we have a couple options here.” 

Fjord holds up three fingers and drops them after each point. “ Option one; we loot the Sour Nest and take all their shit and go to find this Ophelia and complete the Gentleman’s job. Option two; we _don't_ go back to that place and we just complete the job itself and get the money from that. And option numero tres; we just get the _fuck_ out of here and go somewhere else and hope the Gentleman doesn't ever find us.” 

“I like the first one, personally,” Molly admits, crossing his arms. They hadn't had a chance to comb through the place before they left and a part of him wants to find that lost spell page for Caleb so the wizard can at least have something familiar back. And whatever coin is left in that place wouldn't hurt either.

“Do we--- Do we really have to go back there?” The alcohol doesn't seem to erase the nervous stutter from the goblin and she runns her thumb along the bandages on her left hand as she says it.

And just like that it's back to crippling reality. 

The little suspended tender moment of normality and the regular chaos is pulled out from under him and he doesn't know what to say. The others are avoiding each other's eyes and even Jester, for all her enthusiasm earlier, has sagged in her seat at Nott's question. 

“Not all of us, no. Only those who want to,” Fjord admits. 

“But what if they have reinforcements? H--How do we know there isn't someone worse than Lorenzo at the top of their food chain and they're just waiting for us to come back?” Nott adds, face pinching. 

“We can deal with that if it comes to it,” Fjord reassures but there's a lack of true surety in it and there's a tension in his shoulders.

“Can we?” Nott asks, looking to all of them.

Molly’s frown deepens, “Of course we can.” 

They don't readily agree with him and he shifts nervously. 

“Look, that's not-- just--” Fjord shakes his head and sighs, ignoring him, “Everyone in favor of option one raise your hand.” 

There's a smattering of hands that rise, Beau is notably the quickest of them. Yasha and Nott keep their hands down and eyes on the table, and Molly feels something eating at the back of his neck at that. 

“What about Caleb? Doesn't he get a say?” Jester pipes up, head tilting curiously.

“I can go ask hi-” Yasha gently grabs Nott's wrist from where she's started to get out of her seat, shaking her head. 

The goblin tugs at it, brow scrunched and Yasha only maintains her hold, waiting until the goblin finally relents and takes her seat with a small frustrated huff. 

“Okay…okay." Fjord nods, steeling his jaw. "So, we go back I guess,” Fjord says it in such a resigned way that Molly almost wants to take back what he proposed at the beginning. 

He almost regrets putting the option out there and it's such a foreign sensation. He's never really regretted his words before, but the bitter chill in his stomach at the sight of the strung out half orc makes him think he almost does. 

“Oh my gosh, wait!” Jester suddenly cries, slamming her hands onto the table, causing the abandoned glasses to rattle, “How many days has it been since the Gentleman's mission thingy started?” 

Almost all of them tense at that, including Molly. 

“Shit,” he hisses, tail curling. 

“I can send him a message and see if we can get an extension and let him know we aren't, like dead and stuff. You--" She pauses and picks at her sleeve, uncharacteristically subdued. “You guys don't think he'll send people to kill us for being a little behind schedule, right?”

There's cautious glances all around at that. They aren't sure what the Gentleman is really capable of or willing to do. Molly tunes out as Jester starts to send a message, he knows it'll take her two or three uses of the spell to get the full thing across anyways. He turns to Yasha but she's not looking at any of them. She's tracing the lines of her palm with her thumb, and he's never seen that look in her eye before. He wants to chase it away. 

And he's never felt this lost before on what to do. 

Everything usually comes so easily to him. It's almost instinctual, and he supposes that only having two years of life and no memories before that point has stripped him of a lot of his inhibitions. But it's also left him abandoned and out on uncharted waters because he doesn't know how to navigate _this. He's never had to maneuver around any of this before really and it's all a little daunting._

__

__

She meets his eyes finally and he smiles, but she doesn't smile back...and he can feel himself faltering. 

 

 

\-------------------------//-----------------------------------------

 

 

 

Caleb escapes up the stairs, his form hunched into the filthy coat he's far too glad to have back. 

It's something blissfully familiar in the wake of this aftermath while he waits to gather the materials to get his cat back. Even with all the spell components gone, the pockets picked clean, his spell-book holsters in tatters, and the books themselves ripped and singed; they are still his and his alone. The pants and shirt he has are most definitely not though, and the first thing he wants to do is finally get them off. Wash the reek of sweat and soot from them, rid them of the scent of things far more dangerous. 

He finds a bathing stall, a private one thankfully, and he slips in. Barring the door with whatever he can find and sitting with his back to the basin, gulping down air like he's drowning. It's been filled with warm, effervescent water and it's calming. Rife with lavender and chamomile and things he doesn't have names for but artificially soothe and settle over his nerves. He watches the door, expecting the knob to rattle and for a familiar form to slink through, but nothing happens for a long while and the steam has begun to dissipate from the surface.

He turns, dips his fingers in, watches the dirt lift from his skin and swirl in the water and something anxious and heavy sitting across his chest at the sight of it. He knows he has to take his clothes off to bathe. Knows that he needs to clean off the filth and grime on him-- but he can't bring himself to shed them. Can't fathom baring his skin to the open air just yet now that he's finally here.

But he also _needs_ to get as much of himself as clean as he can. 

There's a discarded cloth on a small wooden foot stool near the door. He snatches it up, hurrying back to huddle against the safety of the basin’s shadow. He dips into the water, mops at his face and hands with it, swipes up his arms as far as he can muster and down his neck, scrubbing and sullying the fabric. He reaches his collarbones, swipes the cloth over the sunken and protruding jut of them until he has to stop because he's shaking. It feels like there's hands circling it again, metal cinched tight around his throat, and he knows there isn't, but it's still hard to swallow and breath against it. 

The sopping cloth slips to the floor and he buries his face in his huddled knees, resisting the urge to scream. He can't even take a simple bath anymore, and he wishes he could feel Lorenzo’s skull crumple beneath his fist a second time for taking this away from him too. It's frustrating and stupid and he doesn't know what's so wrong with him that he can't just do it. 

It's a simple, logical process in his head, all the steps are laid out, the reasons neat and concise, even bullet-pointed for ease, but put into practice it's all kinds of broken and mismatched. And his thoughts don't line up with his actions and reactions the way he wants them to, the way he _needs_ them to. 

It's frustrating, because he is free now. 

It's frustrating, because Lorenzo is dead. 

And he knows that logically he shouldn't be afraid of him anymore because of point B, but point A is muddied and stained, and he gets confused whether it's true or not sometimes. It brings him back around in this constant, damning loop and he's never hated having a perfect memory more than now. When he can recall every infinitesimal second where the slaver’s skin touched his own and that because of that perfect, confusing clarity to it that those moments feel more real to him than right now; where he is huddled next to a bath, unfettered, and freed. 

And he doesn't want to think about it. 

The ever looming threat that plagued him is null and void; turned to scattered ash, and yet he can still feel him there. In the corners of himself, and everything feels like a constant standing reminder of it. The most innocuous tasks, the most harmless of sounds or touches turned to poison and daggers against him.

He had hoped it would vanish when Lorenzo did, that it would just erupt into a puff of smoke and be swept away by the taste of triumph and revenge. But he did not anticipate that with the threat of what could happen gone, there's all the time in the world to dwell on what _did_ happen and, somehow it's so much worse. 

He thinks about how Nott is alive and well and laughing, in her best element downstairs drinking Beau under the table. 

And he thinks about how it was only _one_ day. 

Only one day after the deal was made that Mollymauk and Shakäste, and a crew of saviors sundered the Sour Nest and freed its quarry. 

Only one day that Nott had to hold out a little bit longer had he said just said no. 

He thinks about how if he had never made the deal he wouldn't have been dragged along like the slaver’s lap dog for the days following the deal. That he would have just been left in that cell to starve with the rest of them. That he would have been freed alongside them, battered and bruised, but still very much whole. 

He laughs at the terrible, awful irony of it and it burbles it's way up, acidic and burning. 

_It was only one day._

And finally alone, for the first time in weeks, and in a budding lapse of control he lets himself crack. 

It's ugly and brutal, and his ribs feel like they are shattering as he gasps and shudders and tries not to desperately pour out all those twisted, barbed things caught inside him. He carves crescents into his palms and tries not to fall apart even further when they stick, curled up on the floor and wanting to disappear into himself where he doesn't have to think about it or feel like this. He doesn't want to know that fear and that consuming terror of it that he didn't let himself feel while it was happening. But it's threatening to rip out of him and he desperatley holds it back with everything he has left and it leaves him raw and bloodied in its wake. 

He turns to the burning anger and frustration he knows twists against that swallowing emptiness, and he pulls at it because he knows it's easier than the other parts.

It's mind numbing and consuming and he doesn't have to think about everything he's lost. 

He lets red replace the things in his head, because it hurts less. 

Knuckles spill that same venomous red, splinters sticking into his skin as he tears a flimsy foot stool apart with bare hands and desperate fingers. Scrabbles at the wood until the nails finally give, teeth grit, arms trembling and fingers shaking. Snarls at the injustice of it all, at the unfairness of it, breaks it apart in every possible way until he's panting and kneeled in a circle of sundered pine. 

It leaves him feeling weak and empty and _tired._

He carefully picks up the pieces once the regret settles in. The lapse in judgement burning the back of his neck and the blood sluggishly curling and dripping onto the floor as he piles them into the far corner and hides his shame under the discarded cloth. Returning to the basin and leaning against it, the thing fitting oddly against the curve of his spine as he stares up at the ceiling and doesn't move for some time. 

He relishes in the pleasant bite of pain along his knuckles, his mind blissfully blank and empty for once and he falls into that void with a terrifying eagerness that he knows he should fight against. But he's so keen for anything besides the constant anxiety and torment that he doesn't even think twice.

He finally musters the energy to stand on shaky legs after awhile, unsure of how much time has passed.The light has dipped lower, the shadows far longer than what he remembers when he came in. 

His reflection mocks him from the still water. 

It looks back at him and he can see his lapse of control etched into his skin. And it looks the same at first glance, but if he looks close enough, hard enough, he can see it. 

The tightness around his eyes, cheeks drawn and shoulders constantly tensed like there's something standing behind him. He wonders how many of them can see the things etched into the hard lines there, how many of them know who put it there. 

He shoves his bloodied and bruised hands deep into the coat pockets to hide their tremble and the bite of cold metal startles him. He pulls free a forgotten gold piece that sends him flinching when it glitters in the low oranges of sunset. 

It's almost bitter and mocking from where it rests innocently in his palm, standing as a relic from a time before and he holds it over the unsullied basin. Closed fist quaking before he drops it and watches it shatter his reflection across the surface. 

He leaves it there. 

 

\--------

He all but drifts back downstairs, back to the, hollowed with the shame that he let himself break down upstairs. He's ashamed he almost let himself mourn. 

He's ashamed that he let Lorenzo win, even a little bit. 

He won't let it happen again.

It was a poor lapse in judgement and control and _he can't let it happen again_.

He doesn't meet their eyes, just lets them talk around him and to him, but he doesn't answer. He nods his head where he needs to, steps aside when he has to, and it's oddly disconnected.

And he knows there's something familiar about this place, something he can't quite pin down, but he lets that get swallowed up in the dull chromatics around him as well. 

The room arrangements for the night are odd and stacked. They don't have a lot of gold to spare between them and they use what's left in the haversack and the coin they found in the dead slaver's pockets around the sundered campsite. They procure two rooms for the lot of them and they all squabble over the sleeping arrangements. 

He has no preference. He's merely enticed by the prospect of a night without an unwanted presence at his side. 

Mollymauk, Fjord, and Caduceus decide to take a room and Caleb throws in his lot with them. Avoiding the room Yasha picks and for once he doesn't want to share a room with Nott. 

He knows he won't sleep much, and he doesn't want to burden her with that. He knows it will weigh heavier on her than the rest of them and he's scared to admit he can't look at her without hearing Lorenzo's voice in his ear.

She stops him, asks if he's okay and if he's sure and he nods, goes through the motions like a puppet on strings. Reassures her it's just for tonight and that she should enjoy her time with the other girls, but the words are empty and he avoids her eyes and the things he doesn't want to see in them. He avoids looking at her left hand, at the missing finger, the guilt gnawing up his neck. 

He tries not to think about the hurt frown he sees there, the way she seems to shrink back into her cloak and pull the hood up higher as he walks away. 

 

\------

 

He forgets that nicer taverns like these sometimes double as brothels until, from the other side of the wall that he's pushed his makeshift bed against, there's a loud and keening moan. 

He pales. Going deathly still, a cold sweat prickling across his lower back. The sounds continue, turning into muffled cries and pants and growls that send him skittering and slipping down into things he doesn't want to think about. 

He wants to move away from it, but he's trapped, and even though his hands are clenched into fists at his sides he feels like their shoved above his head, locked into place with vice-like fingers that send ice into his veins. 

There's a voice whispering in his ear, fingers brushing over his jaw, a phantom talking about how they own him, that they can do whatever they want with him, that they can break him as they please and he wants them to _stop._ He looks about the dark, unable to move his head from where he swears he can feel nails digging into his chin and raking over his scalp, eyes rolling wildly as he searches for an escape. 

There's the shine of pink in the dark, the moonlight falling over a familiar firbolg. His tall frame impossibly curled along the windowsill and head tilted up, eyes closed as the moon bathes across his fur and shimmers a quiet, silver-white. His eyes snap open, hand going to the staff leaning against the wall (noticeably the most unharmed of the things they reclaimed from the slavers as if they didn't quite know how to desecrate it). 

Caleb sees the moment Caduceus realizes that it's just him and seems to visibly relax. His lips beginning to curl into a familiar lazy smile before he notices something else and his brow furrows, frowning. 

And the firbolg, for all of his lack of intelligence and limited knowledge of the wider world, has a terribly large amount of insight and that feels dangerous in this moment. Caleb can almost feel the firbolg picking the story from his rigid muscles and wild eyes. 

Caduceus stands and begins to make his way over to him. 

Caleb doesn't expect it, but the height of him, looming and tall, slicing out a column of darkness from the moonlight that engulfs him, has him snapping up. Heart sent stuttering and leaping as he backs into the wall, hands up and head bowed. The sounds in the next room are temporarily forgotten as he chokes out the first thing he can to halt the other’s approach. 

“I-I am fine.” 

The firbolg, stops, head tilting, taking a slow step back and lowering himself down into a crouch. 

“You sure say that an awful lot.” 

And there it is, that eerie amount of knowing under the words, a thousand things unsaid, like he can glimpse the ghosts slouching around in his head. 

“Yes, I just--” He chokes off at a particularly loud thump in the other room. 

“Can't sleep?” 

Caleb nods. Face burning, feeling puerile and heavily frustrated about the entire situation. 

“I never really go to places like this either, so I understand,” 

“It's not-- I am not-- That is --” He shakes his head, resisting the urge to muff his ears as the sounds get louder and more hurried next door. 

“You don't have to explain yourself to me.” 

The firbolg walks over to his bags, removing his kettle and prepping it on the window sill, tapping it with the amethyst chunk on the staff. Steam begins to curl from it’s stem and he drops in some leaves. After a few moments he pours two cups, leaving the other on the sill space as he sips at his own.

Caleb eyes him, unsure. 

Caduceus gestures to it, smile calm and reassuring, bleeding an infinite patience and Caleb scrambles up, desperate for any escape from the pleasurable throes beyond the wall. He nods his thanks as his shivering hands curl around the warmed porcelain. 

“Did you need those looked at?” The firbolg suddenly asks after a moment, inclining his head to the split knuckles and blood caked to them. 

The more he looks at them the more there's this burning need to hide them in his pockets, his cheeks hot and looking everywhere but the firbolg’s eyes. 

“Oh,” he breathes, and he had forgotten about them, tried to pretend like his embarrassing tantrum in the bathing room hadn't happened, “N-nein, no. It's fi-- I am okay.” 

“It won't take more than a second,” Caduceus reassures, hand extended as he sets his mug down. 

Caleb stares at it and there's this confusing dread in the pit of him. The shiny clot of blood at the edges of his fists and the constant throb from them are some of the only tangible things he has left to hold on to right now. Everything else was taken away from him with spells and potions, whether he wanted them to be or not. He didn't have a choice with those, but with these he _does_ , and a part of him wants to keep the wounds snapped across his knuckles. 

The pain is grounding and he discovered shortly after that when he pushes his nails against them, tears parts of the scabs away so that they weep, that the sharp lick of hurt chases away the feeling of hands on the back of his neck or teeth brushing against his ear. It makes it all go away, even if it's only for a second, and he's scared to give that sliver of relief up just yet. 

He needs that control so he can keep the things at bay where doesn't have to think about them, where they can't become real. 

“I-" he shifts back, searching for an excuse that won't make him sound completely insane. 

However, Caduceus withdraws his offer first before Caleb can stutter something terrible and hack-kneed out. He watches the hand curl back, feeling for all the world like a pathetic coward. 

“My offer still stands if you ever need them healed later,” and he can see Caduceus reaching out to grab his shoulder and reassure him. 

But before Caleb has the chance to recoil from it the firbolg seems to think twice, redirecting it to his mug. 

He spends the rest of the early morning staring out at the city, watching it become slowly bathed in gold and orange. The firbolg stays awake beside him, a solid and grounding presence amongst the shifting shadows and creaking wood. 

 

\------

 

Caleb follows them out the next morning, still feeling adrift. 

He still hasn't touched an ounce of food and he can feel his head sway and darken with the pit in his stomach. The smell of bacon and the spread of breakfast food had sent him silently gagging and quietly excusing himself to a far table again. And he hadn't missed the eyes lingering on him as he went. 

He walks, stilted and trailing further behind. Keeping his head down and ignoring the way some of the faces in the bar area twist into grinning ones with gold teeth in his peripherals. 

He knows they aren't real, but it doesn't stop them from feeling real. 

He doesn't notice that Fjord has stopped behind the others until he almost walks right into the half orc. His hand is extended and there's a long piece of knitted fabric in it that trails onto the floor, cascading like water out from his palm. It's a deep, royal blue, and he imagines it might be what the ocean looks like. 

Caleb stiffens, trailing up the wave of it, to the green-tinted fingers, up the scuffed leather armor and finally settles on his face. Fjord eyes are solemn and resigned, shoulders hunched and avoiding directly looking at him as he extends it out further.

“Yasha said you needed a new one.” 

Caleb blinks, startled at the offering. He wonders how intuitive the barbarian is that she can tell that a weight wrapped around his throat that he can control helps ground him when he starts to drift. He wonders if she noticed his hand wandering up to cover his jugular, like he can protect it from the teeth he sometimes sees flashing in the corner of his eyes. 

He misses his scarf, misses something soft and warm and not biting steel caressing the skin there. He misses having something to hide the amulet under from those that might try and take it or use it against him.

Fjord clears his throat, shuffling, hand scratching at the back of his head, and Caleb can see that his silence is making the half-orc uncomfortable.

“You know, maybe it was stupid, you don't have to keep it I jus--” 

“Thank you,” Caleb cuts him off, pulling it from the half-orc's hand, careful not to let his fingers brush along his. He says it in common rather than Zemnian so there's no mistake that he is indeed grateful. 

He twines his fingers in the fabric, relieved when it doesn't shine or slide against his skin like silk or finer things. It's heavy, and loosely woven with a sturdy yarn that settles against his fingers. 

The half-orc nods, crossing his arms and shifting his weight. There's more he wants to say, Caleb can see it tumbling around in there. 

“You know, back in that cell, I--” the half orc worries at his lip and Caleb can see the gap where a small filed tusk should be, “I shouldn't have lashed out at you like that.” 

“It is fi-” 

“No, no it really isn't-- it wasn't, Caleb,” Fjord cuts in and there's something hard in his eyes and the set of his jaw. “You didn't deserve me leaping down your throat about that shit. I could tell there was something wrong and I don't know, I just started jumping to all of these conclusions and there's--,” the half orc huffs out a breath, “There's just really no excuse for it. And I'm sorry."

Caleb’s hands spasm around the scarf, drawing it close to his chest and bundling it there. He doesn't know why Fjord feels the need to keep apologizing for it. It happened and it's over. He doesn't understand it. Doesn't understand his insistence to try and bridge a gap that was never there. Doesn't understand why he has to keep bringing it up and why he can't just forget about it. 

“I don't--” Caleb watches the half-orc’s face fall at his halting words and there's frustration there now, something that's almost pity but it's softer, sadder; liquid and malleable in the yellow.

Caleb wants it to go away. 

“Look, I know you don't understand why I'm apologizing, but just-- I'm still sorry, okay. I told Beau she has permission to kick my ass if I ever pull something like that again.” 

Caleb nods, absently, pretty sure that that's what you're supposed to do in these situations, but he's not sure. The half-orc just sighs, and it's strained and filled with something that Caleb can't place.

Fjord makes his way to the tavern' s exit, to join the others presumably. He stops, a hand on the door frame, shoulders sagging and almost defeated, resigned like he knew how this exchange might go but when it happened it still blindsided him. 

“Keep the scarf if you want, throw it away if you don't. I'll understand either way.” 

He leaves and Caleb's left alone among the sparse innards of the tavern, the fabric held tightly against his sternum. 

It's a long moment of listening to the shift of tankards on the bar and the general murmur of the place before he slips it over his head and wraps it around his neck. It settles comfortably around his neck and he curls his hands in it. He heads out the entrance, recoiling against the harsh light and waiting til his eyes adjust before he finally looks around at where they are. 

His thoughts stutter to a screeching halt. 

 

 

\-----------------------------------------

 

No one's told Caleb where they're going yet.

After he had disappeared upstairs they laid out the plans, but Molly distinctly recalls _no one_ informing the wizard. He knows it's probably accidental negligence on the others part, but the burden falls to him to at least give the man a heads up before walking back into the, hopefully still empty, lion's den. 

Molly carefully ignores the fact that he had woken up to Caduceus and Caleb talking in the wee hours of night and that he had unashamedly easvesdropped. Selfishly hoping to over hear something that might give him some helpful insight into the situation. But sadly there had been nothing and he is still as adrift as ever about what to do here. 

It's bright outside, glaring even, and he watches Caleb emerge from the facade of the Landlocked Lady, squinting and blinking against it. Molly can pinpoint the exact moment the wizard finally realizes where they are because he takes a half step back and freezes. 

Molly goes to vault over the side of the cart and head over to him, but Yasha’s already there, already talking to him. Drawing him forwards and towards them with careful fingers on his upper arm and Molly’s brow furrows. 

He's never seen her so involved with the other members of this group before and it's strange. It's not jealousy in him, but it's _something,_ and he wishes he could be the one to help somehow, be useful at least, but she keeps barring him or blocking him. And he's never been explicitly angry or frustrated at her, but there's definitely something brewing there that he doesn't want to contemplate over it too much. 

He feels useless in a way and he can't explain it.

Can't explain how when he looks at all of the marks on them, the new and foreign things he doesn't know how they got outside of his own heavy doses of speculation-- that he feels like he failed them in some way.


	11. Loose Ends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   ~~Strike throughs~~ are intrusive thoughts because Caleb headspace is not okay. Warnings in advance for that. 
> 
> ***The power the cleric uses in this chapter is not that powerful in the game but let's just say for reasons it does what it does here.***

Caleb shrugs off Yasha's hand, brushing her fingers away because he doesn't need help. 

He doesn't need her to coddle him. 

He's _fine._

“I am fine.”

It was just a momentary pause, a small stutter when he found out he was back here again.He doesn't like the way the other's eyes track him when she helps him. He doesn't like the look in their eyes. It feels like pity, like when someone looks down on a hunched dog and doesn't quite know how to help it, but they just stare and stare and _stare_.

Molly is the worst of them all, because he doesn't even know any of it. Doesn't know the half of it, wasn't there for any of it, but he stares the most, like he still wants to help even though he didn't live through any of it, and Caleb doesn't want any of it.

He doesn't want their _pity_.

He doesn't want it because it means they know he's weak and he can't be, he _won't be._

~~He is.~~

He ignores the way Jester smiles shakily at him, her usually beaming grin faltering somewhere in between when she looked at the new scarf he was wearing and when she met his eyes. He's not sure what she sees there, but he turns away, ducks his head. He doesn't want to be responsible for putting that look there. 

Yasha steps up into the cart behind him and he notices she doesn't sit near him this time. No one does. He's in his own little corner of it, the others unconsciously, or maybe consciously, giving him a wide berth and he doesn't blame them or hate them for it. He craves this isolation, he needs to be alone to pick through his wounds and put his head back together where they can't see him fuck it all up. 

He's fine with this.

~~He's not.~~

He doesn't think the dread skittering in his gut can get any worse until they begin to make their way in a familiar direction, and he starts to toss out his thoughts almost frantically. It's easier to think nothing at all then too much so he empties it all out and latches onto that numbing lurk. It's still not enough, but he reigns in that damning tremble as they roll through the front gate, taking in the looming sight like he's not actually there and it's someone else he's seeing through. 

 

 

 

\-----------------//---------------------

 

 

 

Caleb doesn't talk, doesn't react, doesnt even emote past a blank, disinterested stare when they make it back to the Sour Nest and Molly would have almost preferred some kind of nervous breakdown over this eerie blank slate. He would have preferred the nervous hand wringing of Nott or the way Jester's gone uncharacteristically quiet and Fjord is steel-jawed beside her at the helm of the cart. Even the way Yasha has her hand on the hilt of her sword, eyes flicking about nervously or how Beau is cracking her knuckles, keeping look out beside her. 

He wishes the wizard would do anything but sit there because at least it would be something. Something that indicates he's alive. But the blues are cloudy and empty, and Caleb doesn't even react when they come to a stop. 

“Well… we're here,” Fjord huffs out and Molly doesn't know what to do with the nervous tension in it. 

He stands up, clapping his hands together. “Welp, no better way to tell if they've all really flown the coop then by going in, right?” 

“Yeah…,” Fjord agrees, much less enthused, summoning the falchion at his side in a spatter of sea water. 

Beau stalks by him, saying nothing, her fingers tight around her bo staff and shoulders ratcheted up so high she looks like a feral dog. The monk kicks the front door open with a resounding crack and even Molly winces at that. 

“So much for subtlety I guess,” Fjord sighs again and hops off the cart, turning to them, “come on, let's make sure she doesn't get herself killed.” 

Molly watches them all clamber out, but he holds back, eyes flicking to the wizard still in the corner. 

Nott has stayed behind as well and she meets his eyes. “I can stay with hi-” 

“No, there might be locks you need to pick. They need you in there,” Yasha interjects, making her way back up, “I'll stay.”

The goblin frowns, face scrunching into a frustrated grimace, eyes darting between Caleb and the Nest and to her still bandaged hand. He can tell she wants to prove herself, prove she's still a valuable rouge even with a finger missing, but she wants to keep Caleb safe too. 

“He'll be fine, she's got him,” Molly reassures, “let's go join the others.” 

Nott pauses and hesitates, curls her hands around her crossbow. "Wh-what if something happens in there?”

“I'll run _really_ fast,” Yasha’s lip tilts up and it's the closest thing Molly's heard to humor from her since he's gotten her back, “Now go.” 

The goblin finally nods and scampers off and inside with the others. 

“Keep him safe, okay?” 

“I will,” and he knows she means it with every fiber of her being. Knows it as plainly as the guilt he can still see there, laid across her and weighing her down. 

Molly heads for the door, passing through the threshold and back into the fear-steeped and blood-soaked clutches of the slaver's den. 

 

 

\-------------//------------------

 

“Are you okay?” 

He doesn't answer her. 

“Caleb?” 

He grinds his teeth, avoids looking up at that top floor, where beyond the portholes and carved windows he knows there's a sea of shining red. 

“Do you know where you are right now?” And her voice is soft and drifting; worried.

He knows. 

How could he not know? 

This is everything that's stuck in his head and he doesn't know why they've brought him back here. 

~~Because you don't deserve safety~~.

“Why…?” 

“Why, what?”

And that's a good question. 

He doesn't even know what he was going to ask exactly. Maybe it's ‘why are we back?’, ‘why did you bring me here?’... _‘Why us?’_

~~...why me?~~

He doesn't say any of that though. He let's her question shift and drift around them until its chewing at him and it's all he can hear.

Because he doesn't understand why. 

Still doesn't understand why it was him, why not one of the others, and selfishly and sickeningly he thinks it, because he still doesn't _understand_. 

~~It had to be you. You're worth nothing to them.~~

A long series of moments passes, but he doesn't remember them. It feels like a snap between one point to the other and he can't tell if it's been hours or minutes once he's on the other side of it. Eventually, he hears her huff out a sharp, pained breath of air, yet he still doesn't look at her. Even when she shifts and slides the sword over her knees, runs her fingers along the runes and he can almost see his reflection in it from where it's titled towards him. 

“Caleb… you know when--" She pauses and he waits. “When he made me choose, I---”

An explosion rocks through the Nest. 

 

 

\------------------//----------------

 

 

Molly trails in after Nott, blinking at the dimly lit interior and squinting for a moment while his eyes adjust. He makes his way into the dining area after her, where Caduceus is busy inspecting the scattered plates of food left on the table, the occasional spots of blood littering the floors and walls around it. 

Something more immediate catches his eye though. There's a length of frayed rope on the ground and he hisses in a sharp breath at the sight of it. 

__Shit, shit, shit--_ _

He picks it up and turns to Nott, tail lashing and eyes already darting about for any sign of the freed cleric.

“Send a message to Fjord,” he bites out and the goblin tilts her head at him, “one of them might still be here.” 

He knew he shouldn't have left that cleric alive. 

She does what he asks and all too soon there's the sound of footsteps on the stairs beyond the next door and Fjord and the others come tearing through it. There's a small pouch clutched in his hand and Jester is tucking a ripped and partially singed piece of parchment into the haversack behind him. Molly is one step away from asking what they found up there so far, but Fjord cuts him off at the pass.

“What the fuck do you mean one of them is still here?” 

Molly actually falters at that, the look in the half-orc’s eyes is beyond murderous and for a second he can't tell if it's directed at him or not. 

“I, uh..." He worries at the hilt of Summer's Dance, something like regret creeping along the back of his neck. “I might have left one of them tied up in the dining room.”

There's a hush.

“You _what_?” There's something dangerous in Fjord's voice now and the half-orc takes a step forwards. 

“I didn't think--- look, he made a deal with me and I just honored his word." Molly raises his hands, taking a step back from him, voice rising uncomfortably, but he can see Beau's brow scrunch and Fjord's jaw tic and he feels like he's made a mistake. 

“Why the fuck would you honor _their_ word?” 

He doesn't remember, it just happened in the moment, and he really didn't think about it too much after he got them out. He wasn't that concerned with it when it was happening and he--- he just didn't think about it. 

“What the hell, Molly?” Beau bites out from over Fjord's shoulder. 

His stomach is sinking and he thinks he's sinking with it. 

He doesn't understand why they're so angry. 

It's not like he let the man run free. He just tied him up, made it so he might eventually die anyways. He knew the cleric could eventually, maybe, get out, but he didn't really care in the moment. He had been concerned about getting them out as quickly as possible. When he had found them finally and killed the rest of the slavers below, and gotten the most of their belongings he could find with Shakäste’s help as quickly as possible, he hadn't had much time to think on it or do anything else about it. Because Yasha hadn't been among them, and neither had Caleb, and he had wanted to find them immediately. The cleric had even offered information about what route Lorenzo would take and how fast they would be moving and Molly had been _desperate_. 

“Look, we'll just catch him now and kill him this time, okay?” He placates, hoping it'll ease the tension snapping between them. 

He doesn't like the way they're looking at him. Like he fucked something up.

“Yeah and let's hope he hasn't gotten word back to whoever the hell he works for in the meantime.”

_Oh. Shit._ He hadn't even considered that. 

There's a clatter from the hall over, near where he knows the trap door leading down into that rank and pain imprinted dungeon is. Beau tears off after it immediately before anyone can protest. 

“Dammit,” Molly hisses and taking off after her, pulling Summer's Dance from its scabbard and drawing it across the back of his wrist, ice sprouting and creeping up the blade where the red coats it.

He slides to a stop just outside the small room. Beau is already inside, snarling down at the cleric who is halfway down the hinged trap door in the floor; one hand curled around his necklace of bones and chain-link the other held out towards her as he mutters.

Molly leaps forward, reaching out to grab Beau and pull her back, because for all the contention they had for him, for all the disappointment in him moments ago, he still doesn't want to see any of them get hurt. 

“Beau, get bac--!”

Molly's world turns into flames.

 

 

\--------------------///----------------------

 

 

The explosion rocks through them and Caleb only caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of his eye, but-

A stream of fire had tore its way out of the sky and slammed into the top of the Sour Nest, sundering the roof in an explosion of wood and stucco. The building material flying up and pelting the ground around them in a hailstorm of smoldering chunks. 

Yasha shoots up, already in action, sword brandished in front of her and eyes turned wild as she watches the pieces of the Nest continue to fall around them, drifting past in streaking meteorites of burnt rubble. Smoke starts to billow out from where the column of fire vanished as suddenly as it had appeared and the sun is quickly blotted out by the climbing plumes. 

“Molly," she breathes and then she's off, running into the smoldering building. 

The structure is still standing for the most part but some of the roof and part of the second story has caved in. Buckled with coughing embers and soot and its only growing brighter, the inferno climbing. That whispered name from the barbarian, rife with fear and trepidation, lingers in her wake and Caleb can only think about how Nott is in there somewhere too. 

He doesn't want to go towards it. 

The images are juxtaposing; a burning house on top of satin, and he doesn't know which one he fears more right now. 

But he can also hear echoing and distant and past screams that still haunt him, because he didn't save those ones either and he--- 

He already gave away everything to not lose her once, to not lose any of these people.

He _can't_ afford to be a coward right now. 

He won't let himself be. 

He scrambles up, catching the end of the new scarf and wrapping it over his nose and mouth as he stumbles towards the slowly igniting building. The stone portions contain the fire inside but he can see an orange glow creeping out from within. And the only thing that keeps him walking towards it is the image of Nott, burnt and charred, eaten by fire beside the others, all claimed by ash and ruin as well.

He passes through the threshold into chaos. 

Fjord is shouting, pulling Jester to her feet and Caduceus is staring at where the wall adjacent to a familiar hallway has buckled inwards like something behind it exploded outwards. Flames are beginning to lick up into the floorboards lining the ceiling just over that support wall and he watches them creep and inch along the wood, frozen. Smoke has started to fill the space and it's only getting thicker the longer he stands there. 

“Where's Nott? Shit, fuck-- Nott!” Fjord shouts, looking around like the goblin should be in the room with them still, like she'll poke out from under the table and answer him. 

“Oh-- oh gods-- I-- I think she went after Molly and Beau." Jester pulls out of the half orc's grip, stumbling for a moment before catching herself and racing out the door at the back, near the staircase that leads up into the rest of the Sour Nest, and to the right. 

Caleb's vision swims and there's the taste of ash and smoke in his mouth and the scarf doesn't keep any of it out. He stares, transfixed by those growing fringes of hungry light at the corner of his eyes and the edge of that staircase. He can see the beginnings of it, just in that hallway and he can't go towards it, but he needs to. He doesn't know if Nott's okay yet, and he needs to know if she's okay-- but he can't go towards it, he can’t -----

“Caleb!” 

His attention snaps to Fjord. 

“We need to move, now!” The half-orc barks. 

Caleb nods and he's moving without even thinking about it, obeying the order without hesitation, following after the half-orc and firbolg. Orders are easy, simple, they don't require a lot of thinking and he can't wrangle his thoughts together for more than five seconds to do that right now. He shuts down that part of him that wants to run away from the winding darkness that coils up and away with the stairs to his left and turns to the right. 

The low, hellish drone of fire eating whatever lays in its path is growing and he thinks he hears screams, but he's sure they are phantoms because the others don't seem to hear them here. He shakes his head, pulls the fabric around his mouth and nose tighter, and tries to ignore the sounds of his name screamed amongst the cracking pops of wood. 

Jester is only a few feet ahead of them and she's the first one to make it to a bundle of dark fabric at the edge of the hall, just before it turns and leads down and towards where Caleb knows the trapdoor lays. Yellow eyes blink up at her and Caleb is infinitely relieved even if he can see the shell shock in them. Jester nods, seemingly satisfied Nott's okay, her hands clutched and trembling around the Traveler's symbol as she races further down, shouting for the others.

“I've got her!" Caleb calls over the din, barely loud enough to be heard and Fjord nods, continuing on with Caduceus at his side. 

He quickly bundles Nott into his arms, dropping his hold on the impromptu scarf turned face-mask, doing his best to ignore the way he's immediately smothered in soot and ash that tears down and curls up in his lungs. Nott clings onto him and he starts to make his way back towards the entrance, but soon enough she protests, pushing at his arms. 

“We have to help them, Caleb.”

But he wants to leave. 

He _needs_ to leave.

He needs to get her and himself out. There's so much eating at his nerves right now he doesn't know how much longer he can hold himself together for-- and the fire is only getting bigger and louder and brighter, the screams growing with them-- 

“I--” 

“We have to,” She says firmly, wriggling out of his arms, hopping to the ground and inching back towards that hall.

“They need us. There's one still alive and they _need us_ , Caleb." She curls her left hand around her crossbow and he can't help flinching at the sight of the missing finger. 

~~They don't need him.~~

~~He already hurt all of them enough.~~

She doesn't try to convince him any further and just tears off after the rest of them, around the bend where he can't see her anymore. And all there is is the steady glow of a fire ringing his vision and a choice laid at his feet. 

 

 

\--------------///--------------

 

 

 

 

Molly missed the brunt of whatever it was that hit them, but Beau took the heaviest of it. 

He remembers her slamming back into him, both of them falling out of the small room and now he's slumped against the wall. Trying to blink the stars out of his vision and figure out why the back of his head feels like something stomped on it. 

He's unsure if he blacked out or not but everything feels a bit far off, like it's slowly spinning around him,and he looks down. Beau is sprawled across his legs and he can see her whole front is shiny. An angry red and her clothes, which had been mended by Jester only a day ago, are back into tatters, still curling and singed black with the edges of fire. 

“...fuck,” Beau groans, rolling off of where she trapped him, wincing when she rubs at the raw skin on her forearm. “Shit, gods...we.. we gotta--.” 

“Beau! Molly!” There's a familiar, heavily accented voice over the climbing roar of the flames overhead that he hadn't even noticed until now.

The ceiling above them has been engulfed in dangerous fingers of light, cinders falling onto them and Molly blinks stupidly at one that falls onto his arm, burning its way through the coat and undershirt to bite into his skin. He thinks he can see parts of the sky up there too, but there's so much black and orange it's hard to tell.

He leverages himself to his feet, wobbles and steadies himself against the stone wall as his vision dips and blackens. A blue blur tears around the corner just as the ceiling coughs and buckles, a plank of wood slamming into the ground and scattering into charcoal. Molly looks over at it, still dazed by the colorful lights and the throbbing in the back of his skull. 

“Come on, come on, we need to get out of here you guys." Jester grabs under Beau's arms and tugging the monk back and away from the rising heat as she rambles. 

“No, I need to---! Lemme go--!” Beau thrashes and snarls wildly. Jester tries to hold on, but the monk sends an elbow into her diaphragm and the tiefling drops her with a shocked inhale.

“Jester! Did you find them?!” Fjord rounds the corner as well, Caduceus close behind.

“I did, I did, but Beau won't come!” Jester cries back over the inferno, trying to grab the monk again and missing when Beau dodges her grasp.

“Yasha’s… she--,” the monk stumbles towards the trap door, and Molly hadn't noticed it before but it's been ripped from the hinges. 

“Look, Beau, we need to get the hell out of here! This place is going up fast!” Fjord calls, storming down the smoke-choked hall. 

“Yasha went after that piece of shit!” She cries back, form trembling, teeth grit and lip curled into a snarl. 

Molly stiffens, staring at that trapdoor and ignoring the fire crawling above his head. 

“Shit,” Fjord hisses, slowing to a halt as he reaches them.

Molly vaults towards it, narrowly missing another burning piece of the ceiling that slams down behind him. 

“Molly, wait--!” 

He doesn't listen, he drops down into that smothering darkness and away from the climbing inferno above. 

 

\----------------//-------------------------

 

Caleb is caught staring after where Nott disappeared and his feet feel like they've melted into the stone with the pressing heat. The distant shouts spur him forward and he makes his way towards them. Thoughts snapping and crackling alongside the cry of burning wood smothering him. 

He catches the tail end of the others shouting at Molly as the tiefling all but dives into a door he remembers all too vividly. 

“Fucking--” Fjord starts, lunging after him. 

“Molly!” Beau growls, reaching for him as well, but the colorful coat is already gone.

“We gotta go after him!” Nott shouts, seeming to startle the half-orc who hadn't noticed her return yet. 

“Why didn't y'all leave?!” Fjord calls over the snap of flames, eyeing both of them worriedly. 

“That doesn't matter right now, let's just go kill this fucker!” Beau snarls and takes off into the room. 

“If we burn up because of this I blame all of you.” 

Caleb follows behind Nott as Jester grabs Fjord's arm and drags the reluctant half-orc towards the trap door. Beau already descending after Molly, the monk snapping her staff along the wall to shake the soot and embers off of it as she goes.

Nott looks back towards him and smiles reassuringly despite the fear in her eyes. Caleb winces at the missing tooth, satin flashing in his head, and ignores the way her smile falters at that. She hoists up her crossbow and follows the rest of them down. Caduceus peers back at him for a brief moment before he descends as well, illuminated by the warnings of red and orange overhead, his brow ceased. 

Caleb watches them all go back down there, into that abandoned hell, and he doesn't know what to do. 

He's stuck, staring at where his feet have dragged him, back to the edge of where it all started and he’s shaking again, because none of them can see him in that moment. He thought that when this was all over he would never be back here ever again and he wouldn't have to think about it. That he could suppress it, repress it all until things went back to normal.But now they've forced him back here into a place where his nightmares stalk and writhe, and he can't help but feel betrayed. 

He doesn't understand why they would bring him back here. But he also can't leave them down there by themselves. 

~~He still remembers what happened the last time he was a coward.~~. 

He descends after them, rattling apart the whole way down-- but he keeps it concealed beneath his skin, where they can't possibly see it. 

 

 

 

\-------------------------------//----------------------

 

 

 

Molly careens down the stairs, slipping on a step, heart leaping in his chest, but manages to catch himself before nearly slamming into Yasha's back where she stands at the foot of the stairs, snarling at someone in the back of the room. They're pressed up against the cell bars and staring at her before their eyes flick to him and grow even wider. 

“You should have just left when you had the chance,” Molly snarls, reigniting the blade along the back of his arm this time, bathing the area around him in a halo of radiant light. 

They need to finish this quickly and get the hell out of here. He can hear the others clambering their way down in the distance, it'll take them a moment to reach the staircase, but he knows they'll be here soon enough. 

“Just give up. There's eight of us and one of you, and let me tell you." Molly spins the blade with a flourish. “Your odds at making it out of here alive aren't looking too good right now.” 

Yasha steps forward and the cleric's hand shoots up towards her, a faint ruddy, almost rust glow surrounding it. Molly goes to pull her out of the way of whatever the cleric is going to do but Yasha halts, stuttering in place and freezing. 

“Yasha?” 

The great sword in her hands falls slack, the tip of it clinking against the stone as she stares straight ahead and Molly takes a cautious step back at the sight. Dread creeps up on him as the cleric moves his finger and Molly watches it point right at him. He doesn't even have time to dodge or move or put his own blade up to stop it before Yasha is swinging at him. Driving her sword into his right side with all of her strength.

It sends him sprawling and rolling, fingers losing their grip on the Summer's Dance and the crimson rite imbued into it fizzling out as it slips from his hand. He groans once he finally comes to a stop, clapping a hand over his ribs and the gashing tear left in his side. He looks up through narrowed eyes to see Yasha still there, the sword slicked in crimson, blood pattering slowly against the stone, her eyes wide and frightened and----

“Yasha, what the fuck?!” 

There's a blur of blue and tan and something slams into Yasha’s side. But the barbarian doesn't resist it, just stumbles back from the force of it. 

“Wait, Beau! It's not her! He has some kind of-- of I don't know-- fucking mind control!” Molly manages to bite out, stumbling back to his feet and recollecting his scimitar. 

“He _what_?” Fjord stomps into the chamber, hand already up, energy coalescing in the palm that he sends crackling and slamming into the cleric at the far side of the chamber. 

“We need to wrap this up, the place won't stay standing for much longer,” Caduceus adds, tapping his staff against the stones and the chattering and buzz of insects joins the distant call of fire. 

Jester throws out her hands towards the cleric as the man reaches into a pouch at his side and pulls out a pinch of something. The cleric immediately comes to a stop, paralyzed, eyes bouncing between each of them, fingers still held aloft with a fine yellow powder caught between them. 

“I can only hold him for a little bit you guys!” Jester shouts, tail lashing.

Molly flicks the sword in his hand, taking a running step forward and blinking out in a swirl of mist and scattering leaves, reappearing even closer to the petrified cleric. He closes the remaining gap easily sword arcing down for the man's shoulder, hungry to fix the mistake he made by leaving him alive in the first place. The cleric suddenly breaks the hold and shifts, missing the swinging sword and snatching Molly's wrist.

“Oh...you're already bleeding. That makes this easier." There's a delighted grin on the human’s face as he crooks his finger. 

The bleeding cut on Molly's wrist, the wound in his side, and the slice along the right side of his neck all ignite. Droplets of red drawn out of the tears and it's an odd mirror of when Cree did the same thing in the Gentleman's bar. Except this hurts in every possible way and Molly tries to draw back with a hiss, but the cleric doesn't relinquish his grip. 

He doesn't know how, but this human has a similar control over blood and Molly doesn't like the look in his eyes as he watches the liquid drip and slide over his skin. 

“You're a familiar one…,” 

_Nope._

Molly snarls, face twisting into a grimace as he breaks the cleric's hold and kicks him back and away from him. He really doesn't need another point of his nonexistent past coming up right now. 

“I didn't recognize you with all of that…" The man's lip curls, head tilting. “ _Color_ the first time, but I've definitely seen you before.”

The cleric's eyes are wild, darting between something behind Molly, the tattoo snaking up his neck, and the patch of silver scars over his sternum. And he doesn't like the knowing look in his eyes anymore than he likes that he left this piece of shit alive in the first place.

“Lucie-” 

A burst of flame slams into the cleric's chest, cutting off the name, and the human stumbles back, the robes burning away where it hit. Molly glances over his shoulder to see Caleb, hand outstretched and it's a mirror the night before, when there was a much larger threat before them. 

“Stop...talking so much,” Caleb huffs out and Molly's absolutely delighted at the small quip. 

“You can't stop us,” The cleric snarls, whipping towards the wizard, seeming to forget about Molly entirely in his fanatic rage, smothering out the still smoldering parts of his robes with one hand and grabbing at the necklace with another. “Take out one ring and there's always another, always another link in the chain. _He_ can't be stopped.”

“We killed your boss so I'm pretty sure he's been thoroughly and expertly stopped, no offense there,” Molly drawls, holding his scimitar up towards the man's throat. 

The cleric's eyes shoot back to him, narrowed and angry. 

“That _thing_ was never my boss,” the cleric grinds out through a disturbing smile, eyes flicking over him, “but you already know that don't you, Nonag-” 

Another fire bolt slams into the cleric's chest and he coughs, stumbling back. 

“Stop. Talking.” The wizard bites it out in a shaky breath and there's a tremble in his fingers that sends Molly frowning. 

Yasha steps up behind Caleb, her eyes burning, saying nothing as she stares down the frenetic devout. 

“Torog’s will shall reig--” 

Molly slams the cleric back into the bars, holding the scimitar up to his throat, tail lashing and teeth bared. “I'm tired of listening to you blabber on, I shouldn't have spared you up top the other day." He presses the blade in, blood welling along it. "That was my mistake.” 

“It would be you, wouldn't it? To turn against hi-” The cleric chokes off as Molly bares down on him. 

He doesn't notice the cleric's hand extending past him, towards the others, not until there's a blast of rocking energy and he's caught off guard by the flare of heat at his back as he's shoved off and away. Molly blinks, brow furrowing, because the cleric is just _gone_ from under him and all that's behind him is chaotic shouting. 

“He knows fucking fireball?!” Beau shouts.

“What the hell is this guy?” Fjord asks, and Molly would really like to know that as well.

“Little help over here?” He turns around at that one to see Caduceus trying to drag a prone Caleb out of the line of immediate fire. 

There's a scorched ring of stone beginning in the area just behind him and extending back in a frankly impressive radius. Yasha is still standing but there's smoke curling up from her now singed, reclaimed leather armor and clothes. 

“Will someone just fucking shut him up already!” Beau shouts, trying to slam a fist into the cleric's face as he mutters another incantation, now standing even closer to the stairs. 

Only Fjord and Jester stand between him and freedom. 

“Get that thing off his neck, you guys!”Jester cries, throwing up her hands to try and hold him again, but it doesn't take effect. And the human, who he's honestly starting to think may be more than just a cleric, reaches into the pouch at his side again. 

“Why... wasn't that done in the first place?” Caleb coughs from the ground, seeming to have been recovered by Caduceus.

“I don't know, fucking ask Molly!” Beau snarls, roundhouse kicking the cleric, the man only stumbling a bit, but thankfully losing concentration on the spell he had started. 

“ Excuse me for being a bit preoccupied with trying to break you all out!” 

“Hey, you guys, can we please focu--?” Nott starts just as Yasha cleaves down on the human and there's a wet sucking sound as his extended arm slops off and onto the floor. 

“Fuck--” 

“Holy sh--” 

She raises the blade again, swinging with everything she has, teeth grit into a wrinkling snarl. The edge of the blade embeds into the front of the human's skull and he goes tumbling with the sheer, unrestrained strength behind it. Molly stares at the limp, boneless body, a crimson line of blood weeping from his split forehead. 

There's a brief hush and the only sound is the distant roar of the fire upstairs. 

“Yo, Yasha...that was honestly super clutch,” Beau finally says, starry eyed and looking up at the barbarian. 

He snaps out of his stupor shaking off the unease with the help of Beau's frankly terrible attempts.

Molly rolls his eyes. “Time for flirting later you two, we need to go.” 

“I won't argue with that,” Fjord seconds, already heading for the stairs. 

“Come on, Caleb.” 

Molly glances back to see Nott coaxing the wizard away from where he's staring at the table that was blown to smithereens at some point during the battle. Molly can still see the glimmer of metallic cuffs among the charred pieces and he shudders before turning away. 

 

 

\----------------//----------------------------

 

 

Caleb doesn't remember much from the fight.

He remembers he wanted it all to stop.

He wanted the smoke caught in the back of his throat to be gone, and he wanted Adiran to stop talking because all he could remember was seeing the cleric standing next to Lorenzo as he was tortured. And that made him think about other things he still doesn't want to delve into. _Ever._

And after a moment, they were all just suddenly outside, back in the cart-- and now it's rattling down the road away from the Nest. Caleb stares vacantly up at the smoldering ruins as they shrink and shrink the further they get from it. It's still barely visible behind that sentinel wall, the flames curling out of the porthole windows that line the spiraling staircase within. He knows that red stain of satin is probably burning away right now. Knows it's being eaten away by the fire, but he also knows it's stuck in his head-- and he thinks it'll probably live there forever too. 

He half listens to their chatter, fading in and out himself, head stuffed with cotton and stomach trying to collapse in on itself. 

“Hey, Fjord, they're all dead now, right?” Jester asks quietly.

“I think so…” 

“Good.” 

“What the hell do you think he was going on about down there?” Beau asks. 

“I don't know, but I have a feeling it's above our pay grade.” Fjord snaps the horses reins, spurring the cart on a bit faster. 

“Hey, Molly, did that guy recognize you or som---?”

“No.” 

“But I swear he--” 

“He _didn't_.” 

“But---”

“....Let him alone, Jester.” 

“...okay.” 

 

 

 

\-----------------//----------------------

 

 

 

They return to the Landlocked Lady, the other cart already gone and Molly is pretty sure Shakäste and Keg have taken off with the freed slaves in tow by now.

And gods, he needs a very, _very_ stiff drink. 

They sit at the two tables they had pushed up before, Champ seeming to have left the arrangement alone, anticipating their return. Fjord stops him just as he takes his seat, glancing to Beau, who's already perched in her chair, and nodding before turning back to him. Molly raises a brow, wondering what the half-orc wants. 

“Hey, I uh..." Fjord starts, squeezing his shoulder reassuringly, "I just wanted to say, I'm sorry for snapping at you back there about leaving that guy alive. You made a judgement call and you stuck by it, and I can't fault you for that." 

“Uh..me too...I guess...” Beau grumbles, albeit reluctantly, glancing to Fjord who gives her a small thumbs up and a smile. 

“It's understandable. I mean..." Molly scratches at the back of his neck, eyes darting away from them. “I really shouldn't have forced you all to go back there again either, so..." 

He sighs, worrying at the singed hole in his sleeve. He doesn't accept their apology because he doesn't need it.

He should have been better, should have thought ahead of time so that this wouldn't have happened in the first place. And yes, they were all okay, and none of them severely wounded and no reinforcements had shown up to slap him or the others in chains-- so it was a definite success. But he can't get that feeling of guilt out of his head, and he doesn't like the way it sits there and crouches.

A hand setttles over his on the table and he looks up to a grinning Jester sat across from him. 

“Don't worry about it too much, because if we hadn't gone back we wouldn't have gotten this,” she interjects, eagerly holding up and waving around a piece of parchment. 

His eyes widen at the sight of it, the corner of his mouth curling into a grin. “Well, I'll be damned.”

“Is that…?” Nott asks, wide-eyed and already reaching out for it. 

“Yeah, it is! I found it on the side table upstairs before--” Jester shoots a glance to Beau and him. “Er, before the place kinda, you know, blew up and all.” 

The monk crosses her arms, leaning back in her chair and lifting her lip.

“Hey, it wasn't me that fucked it. That dude was packing some serious firepower, I just assumed he was some shitty cleric I could knock out real quick,” Beau winces, “Er, no offense.” 

“It's fine,” Caduceus and Jester intone at the same time and Molly quirks a brow at that. 

“Oo, jinx, Deucey! You owe me a drink now!” The blue tiefling giggles, clapping her hands. 

“Uh..sure, Miss Jester.” 

“Stop tormenting the poor man," Molly chuckles, shaking his head.

“He still owes me a drink though,” Jester sing songs, swaying in her seat, “preferably some milk, please.” 

“I'll cover the drink, Mister Clay," Molly offers. 

“You don't have to do that---” 

“I insist.”

“Can you buy me a drink as well?” 

“Buy your own drinks, Beau. I'm not an enabler,” Molly crosses his arms, brow cocked. 

“What the hell? I took most of that blow for you back there, I feel like you owe me one.” 

“Naw, I think we're even,” He taps his sternum. 

Beau chuckles, shaking her head and snidely smirking back, “Pulling the dying card. What a low blow, man.” 

“I'm not afraid to play below the belt.” 

Fjord groans and covers his face with his hands.

“I'm all too aware of that fact, thanks,” 

Molly laughs, “I can't help it that the walls are a little too thin in Zadash.”

“Okay, but did you have to come in after wearing the tapestry." Beau grimaces. “And _only_ the tapestry?” 

“Hm, lemme think." He steeples his fingers under his chin, grinning, tail flicking and feeling for all the world highly pleased by the entire scenario. “ _Yes._ ” 

“I really didn't want to see that much of you in my entire lifetime.” 

“Not enough curves for you, huh?” 

Beau's face colors a bit at that and Molly grins. 

“Okay-- Okay-- Stop, nope, this conversation is over right _now_." Fjord’s face is a flustered dark green and Molly would be a liar if he didn't admit the flush up to the man's ears wasn't fascinatingly adorable. 

Jester is grinning next to the half-orc and nodding. “For the record I think the tapestry complimented your skin tone very nicely.” 

Molly shoots Beau a look, smirking. “See? Someone appreciates my hard work.”

“Jester is easy to impress,” Beau deadpans. 

“No I'm not,” the tiefling in question pouts, but it seems more playful than hurt. “He just has a lot of colors, like a …. like a pretty painting! It's very, very nice to look at.” 

“Thank you, dear.” 

“Can we please stop talking about Molly being naked,” Fjord laments and he would usually take pity on the half orc, but he's enjoying this. 

“Why? Got you a bit flustered?” His grin is lecherous and sharp and he winks for good measure. 

The half orc's face only gets darker at that and Molly can't help but laugh. 

“I-- I-- uh...” 

Molly tilts his head, eyes hooded. "Tiefling got your tongue?” 

“Er.. I--” 

“Hey, let up on the poor guy,” Beau reasons, fiddling with the wraps on her forearms, but he can see she's trying to hide a grin of her own.

“Fjord can't help that he's nervous when it comes to, you know--" Jester leans in, cupping a hand over her mouth and loudly whispering. "--sex stuff.” 

She grins and points back to the half orc who's buried his face in his arms at this point. Molly honestly, and genuinely, guffaws at that, throws his head back and he doesn't even care how loud he is. 

This is such a breath of fresh air compared to everything else and this familiar banter is all he could ever want from them. It distracts him from the past he doesn't know shit about that seems to constantly be dogging his heels and the unknown hurts they endured back in that now smoldering dungeon. 

“Now, that we've talked about Molly's dick and otherwise for _way_ too long can I have that piece of paper?” Nott finally asks, hand extended. 

“Oh, right!” Jester hands it over and the goblin all but snatches it, eyes roving over it eagerly. 

“It's the thing, right? Please, tell me it's the thing,” Jester is crossing her fingers and nearly bouncing in her seat. He's not even sure why it means so much to her to get the spell back for Caleb in the first place. 

Don't get him wrong, he's very eager to get it back to the wizard as well, but Jester is almost _too_ eager, like she's desperately trying to bridge some gap between the two of them with gifts and attonements.

And speaking of Caleb. The wizard hasn't said a word since they sat down, or even since they left the Nest. Molly eyes him, noting the far away look in the blues and the way he's idly picking at a scab on one of his knuckles. 

“It's the spell,” Nott sighs, sagging like a weight just left her shoulders andJester snatches it back, rolling it up. 

“Will it still work now that it's out of the book?” Molly asks, fingers drumming on the table.

“I-- I don't know..." The goblin wrings her hands, glancing at the unresponsive wizard beside her. 

“Well... he can tell us if it'll work later. And I'll give it back to him when he's feeling better.” Jester nods, sticking it back in the haversack. 

“Okay…” The goblin isn't even paying attention anymore, she's just watching Caleb’s face for any sign of recognition that he heard them and didn't just stare at the table the whole time. 

“Is he oka-?” 

“He's fine,” Yasha cuts Molly off, shutting that conversation down before it can start. 

He can't help but bristle a bit, lips pursing. 

He doesn't know what the hell everyone's dodging around it for. There's clearly something wrong, but anytime he tries to prod at it they start giving him lies and half truths like he can't tell they're keeping something from him. Like they don't think he'll get it, or he'll react badly, or just not understand.

It feels like the way a table of adults talks over a child and he can't help that niggling little thread of petulance at it. He drums his fingers on the wood faster, propping his cheek on his fist and waiting for something to catch his attention that isn't the silent wizard next to him. 

Fjord pulls up a small leather pouch and he thinks he remembers the half-orc holding it when he came storming down the stairs and into the dining area. Molly latches onto it eagerly. “What's that you got?” 

“Oh, shit, yeah... this--” Fjord tosses it up and catches it. “Found it under the big bed upstairs. I'm assuming it was Lorenzo's probably.” 

He watches Caleb stiffen out of the corner of his eye and it's the first indication he's had that he's listening. Yasha frowns to the other side of him as well and he doesn't miss the way the half-orc winces as well, recoiling like he wants to take the words back. 

“Oooo, what's inside?” Jester leans forward, face eager. 

The half-orc recovers from his lapse and inches it open, loosening the drawstring. He grimaces down at it. 

“Nothing,” he puts it up to his ear and shakes it, “but I swear I can hear things rattlin’ around in ther--”

Nott jumps up and snatches it out of the half-orc’s hands from across the table, scurrying back to her seat.

“Hey, what the---!”

“It's _obviously_ a magic bag so I think Caleb should look at it.” 

Molly can tell the goblin just wants to distract the wizard from whatever is eating at him. That she's noticed he's been quiet and withdrawn and that they've been effectively talking around him. She presses it into his hands and Molly watches them stay alarmingly slack for a moment before reflexively closing around it. Like he would rather do anything besides hold that bag, but only relented once Nott let go. 

“I do not...ah... it might not be very wise to empty it out down here, Nott." 

Caleb's voice is so quiet it's almost hard to hear him, but he talks and that's almost a relief. 

Almost. 

But he talks like he's afraid of something hearing him, like if he speaks too loudly hounds will melt out of the rafters to devour him.

“It's fine, this place is pretty bloody dead as it is,” Molly reassures softly, highly curious to see what's in there himself and wanting to encourage Caleb to at least interact a little bit. 

“Okay…” The wizard carefully plucks the inside of the bag between two fingers and pulls it inside out over the table. 

Nothing happens at first, before there's a jolt from the pouch, and suddenly there's a flood of sound as things come tumbling out. 

“Hey! Don't make a mess of my establishment, please!” 

“Sorry about that!” Molly calls back, waving a hand. 

The mustached man across the room just grumbles under his breath and goes back to his bookkeeping. 

Molly turns back. “So what did we find--?” 

He freezes. 

_Oh. Well fuck_.That's not what he expected to see. 

There's a good collection of platinum on the table, some of it still rolling away or settling onto the tabletop, but that's not what really catches his eye.

It's the teeth. It's a whole lot of teeth. Every kind imaginable. Big, small. Sharp, blunt. Corroded, whole. White, yellowed. Some of them are even still stained with blood and have bits of gum clinging to them. He tries not to think about the bile inching its way up his throat. 

No one says anything for a bit and Molly’s eyes wander to the gap he knows lies behind Fjord's bottom lip and the less obvious gap in Nott's own snaggle-toothed collection. 

“Shit," he mutters and no one else is moving to get them off the table, even Beau, of all of them, is frozen, her fingers worrying at her right cheek. 

He doesn't like this, doesn't like this hanging silence, doesn't like what it's doing to his friends. 

He grabs the pouch out of Caleb's trembling fingers, rights it, and quickly starts to collect them off the table. He cringes with each new one, tries not to think about how one of the ones he picks up somewhere in there might belong to one of them. 

When they're finally all gone he turns to the torture implements next. They're rusted and stained, and he doesn't know what they're made for and he doesn't care to find out. He just sweeps them all back into the little bag of holding where they can't hurt his friends. 

It's still quiet even when he finishes and he's too scared to snap the silence. 

Fjord clears his throat, shifting in his chair, “Thanks, Molly.” 

“That was…” 

“Can we not?” Fjord mutters and Molly nods vigorously. 

“Yup.” 

“We should…,” Nott worries at one of her ears with an idle hand, “We should collect all the platinum before someone notices.” 

“Good plan,” he agrees, eager for a distraction.

Everyone helps collect the platinum, even Caleb, but he sort of numbly picks up the pieces and stacks them into a small tower in front of him. He doesn't even count them the way he used to. Where he would obsessively say the number out loud and had to painstakingly account for every last piece and Molly never thought he'd miss a drawn out habit so much. 

Molly finds a strange ruby among them, twirls it amongst his fingers and plays it over them idly. He doesn't know what it's for, but he can ask Caleb to identify it later when the man isn't staring down the coins on the table like they'll leap at him.

Beau clears her throat and Molly's attention snaps to her immediately. 

“I didn't mention it earlier and I kind of forgot last night when I got a bit… uh, ‘fucked up’, but I might have looted this off of the non-charred to shit bits of Lorenzo,” Beau holds up a letter between two fingers. 

“Cool, awesome, _more_ mail fraud.” 

“Geeze, Nott, you're still on about that?” 

The goblin throws her hands up, “It's literally the shittiest crime you can do!” 

“I can think of a few others.” 

“I'm sure you can.” 

“Hey, that first letter got us to the Gentleman eventually, and guess who's gonna get saddled with a shit ton of gold after we escort Ophelia back?” Beau quirks a brow, gesturing to everyone, “Us.” 

“Uhm…” Jester starts, wringing her hands, “Actually, because we're behind schedule he says he was cutting one fourth of our pay... so.” 

Fjord looks over the small stacks of platinum, “I think this'll make up for it a bit.” 

“What's in the letter?” Yasha asks, voice low and eyes honed in on the folded parchment in Beau's hand.

There's a handprint stained on the outside and Molly has the distinct feeling he knows who's hand would fit over it perfectly. 

“Don't know, haven't opened it yet, did you wanna--?” Beau goes to hand it over, eyes flicking everywhere but Yasha's face and head turned, cheeks dusted a faint pink. 

Molly snatches it out of her hand and the monk squawks, swiping at him.

He ignores her, peeling it open and quickly remembering that he can't exactly read as well as some of the people at this table probably can, but he recognizes the drawing immediately. 

“Hey, Fjord?” 

“...yeah?”

“Do you recognize this?” He turns it around so that the others can see. 

“A fuckable cantaloupe?” Jester asks, head tilting. 

Fjord is staring at it, a hand drifting to cover the pit of his chest even though it's plenty protected by the scuffed armor. 

“Wait,” Jester gasps, snatching the letter and looking between it and Fjord and back to it a few times, “Oh, my gosh, is this the thing in your stomach?” 

“Woah, woah, wait, why would Lorenzo have that?” Beau throws her hands out, brow scrunched. 

Fjord has gone deathly pale, staring at the very detailed rendering, “I don't… I don't know.” 

“What does it say?” 

Molly, honest to god, startles at the quiet wizard's voice. He hadn't expected him to speak at all and his heart stutters a bit at the small fright.

But at least the man is somewhat engaged now. 

Jester's eyes rove over the letter, her brow furrowing as she goes. “Who the hell is Marius LePwaaaal?” 

“I'm quite sure that's not how it's pronounced,” Molly argues. 

“I don't know, I mean this spelling is really, _really_ weird. I think his parents might have hated him.” 

There's a few beats of silence as the tiefling continues reading, muttering under her breath. 

“Has anyone here been to the ‘Wayfarer’s Cove’?” Jester continues, still looking over the letter, Nott joining in beside her. 

Fjord clears his throat, raising a hand, “Yeah, I have.” 

“Okay, so, according to this letter we, or whoever this thing was for, are supposed to go to this Wayfarer' s Cove and give the orb thingy to this Maurice LePwool--” 

“Once again, I don't think that's how you're supposed to say it--”

“And tell him we have a gift for ‘the Captain’. And it's signed A-van-tik-a.” 

“I like how you got that one but not the othe-” 

“When are we supposed to have it delivered by?” Fjord cuts him off. 

“Uh…,” She skims back through the letter, muttering, “Quin’Peelar?”

“Quinn Pillar?” Nott repeats, brow furrowed and squinting down at the word.

“Quen'pillar,” Caleb corrects absently, picking at the scabs along his knuckles again. 

“What month is it now?” Fjord asks, glancing around nervously. 

“Uh…” Molly honest to the gods has no clue. 

He barely even knows the names of the months, it hasn't really seemed like something important to learn in his two years of life so far. 

“Not that one... probably?” Nott supplies, shrugging. 

“No one has a calendar?” Jester asks.

“Oh, yeah, I'm sorry, let me just pull one out of my ass real quick,” Beau snipes, lip curling into a smirk and Jester rolls her eyes at the jibe, but grins anyways.

“We have some time... not much,” Caduceus finally adds, finger tapping on the staff. A beetle crawls out from one of the openings in it and clicks its mandibles at him, mimicking the rhythm. 

“Uh-huh..." Fhord eyes the firbolg, the staff, and the beetle, his brow furrowed. “You know...I didn't get a chance to ask before with everything going on, but where _exactly_ did they pull you from and how did you get strung along on this absolute shit show?”

“I'm curious about that as well,” Molly folds his arms on the table and looks to the firbolg with a lazy smirk that the other matches with a lazy smile of his own. 

“They came to me for help, I had my own mission, our paths aligned, so I agreed.” 

“We found him in a cemetery,” Beau adds.

“Actually it's a graveya--”

“He was living off of dead people,” Nott adds as well. 

“It's just the tea actual--”

“He _what_?” Fjord’s voice cracks, climbing a few octaves. 

Molly pinches the bridge of his nose. “Let him talk for five seconds.” 

“It's fine. It's not really that interesting of a story anyways. I just have things I need to do... eventually...at some point and I had visions that an opportunity would come to my door and it did.” 

“Visions?” 

“Yes.” 

Molly wants him to elaborate, but he can tell that this conversation has already gone where it can. Maybe another time he can poke at him a little more and get something substantial out of the man.He's very curious about the visions, because he can still remember that impression of silvers and blues in his head, and the voice that spoke to him and sounded like the way the moon looks. 

“Ugh, gods...what time is it and why am I not drunk yet?” Beau gripes, burying her face into her arms.

“You bring up a really good point,” Molly swipes one of the stacks of platinum still on the table and stands up. “I'm gonna try and forget what my face feels like if you all don't mind.”

“Go right ahead,” Fjord mutters, swiping a hand down his face, rubbing at his jaw and sighing, “Actually… you know what, I might just join you in that endeavor.” 

Molly smirks. “The more the merrier.”

 

 

 

\------------------------//--------------------------

 

 

 

 

There was a lot to process and he had drifted in and out for parts of it. 

He had tried to stay present for all of it, but sometimes he would start drifting and it was difficult to tether himself back down. He got the gist of most of it at least, lost bits of other things, tuned out their idle chatter and bickering. Tried not to fall apart when the teeth rattled across the table amongst the shine of platinum. 

When a lavender hand had collected and swept all of the things out of sight Caleb couldn't have been more grateful. 

He can sort of remember speaking, but it felt more instinctual than active, like his brain knew what response to insert before his thoughts could deliberate on it. It was odd, but it meant he didn't have to think that much either, so it was also good. 

Maybe.

It's hard to tell. 

There's still the taste of ash and soot in his mouth and the shine of firelight at the edges of his peripherals that disappears when he turns his head slightly to look at it. 

The others are getting up or moving about now and he thinks maybe he should to, but he's stuck in the chair. He blinks and somehow he's walking up stairs and he doesn't remember leaving the table, but he had to of, because he's back at the room from the night before. There's still light outside, orange and dusky, and it shines like fire in the panes as he steps into the room. 

The pit of his gut hurts, but he also feels so nauseous food is not an option and he's very, very tired. Head a bit fuzzy and muddled, a bit too full of greys and it's nicer than when its stabbing and sharp with anxiety, but he also doesn't really like the feeling of being suspended or out of control either. 

It feels like this isn't his body and he doesn't know if that's a good thing or not. 

He blinks again and he's curled up on his makeshift bed, consisting of a bundled up comforter and a thin blanket shoved into the farthest corner from the door. 

He watches the door. 

He blinks. 

He watches the door. 

He blinks again---

It melts into black. 

__

_He's surrounded by fire._

_There's flames licking up the walls and curling over him in towering columns of hungry prowling light. They inch towards him, held at bay a few feet from his skin, still searing and painful where they rest._

_There's stone and wood and walls and he recognizes this place._

_He walks through the room, past the table of untouched food and into the hall, feet carrying him left where he tells them to go right._

_There's stairs, steep and dark, coated in that same animated fire that snaps its teeth at his ankles and moves about him like wolves._

_He ascends them._

_There's screams from below now. Ones he recognizes, some he doesn't, but he can't turn around and go to them._

_There's a hall at the top. The fire is here too, but it's the color of satin, bleeding and reflective._

_He walks among it and it tears at his skin, but he ignores it, feet pushing him on._

_There is a door._

_It's closed._

_There is no fire here._

_Only blood that drips from the seams of it and into the floor, tying around his ankles in coils of that same satin as before._

_The door inches open._

_The room beyond is bathed in blood that shines like gloss and fabric._

_It's empty._

_There's teeth on his ear._

_“What will you do for it?”_

_There's teeth on his neck._

_“What are you willing to give?”_

_He opens his mouth._

_“...everything.”_

__

 

He shoots up in the corner of the room and it's dark now. The shadows have climbed higher along the walls, deepened with the growing purple outside. 

He grabs the amulet hidden under the scarf, heart beating against his ribs. He just wants to sleep, but he can't. It won't let him. He wonders what it would cost for him to cut that part of him out. He thinks even if it cost him his soul he would give it away to forget everything or at least go back to before when only fire haunted him and not everything in between.

He slumps against the wall, tucking his shoulder blades against the corner, staring at the closed door. 

None of them are back in the room yet.

A part of him doesn't want them here, because they have questions, and wide eyes, and too much insight. But another part knows they'll keep him safe... and that part of him feels weak. 

The door creaks open and he can't help but flinch back from the sound. He hates how his own body betrays him, how it jumps and startles against his will. 

There's a familiar firbolg, a wrapped cloth bundle in one hand and his usual lazy smile is a tad tighter than usual when he meets his eyes across the room. 

“I brought some food,” Caduceus explains softly, gravely, smooth like rustling tree boughs, and Caleb eyes him, not moving, “I don't know if you'll eat it, but I can tell you haven't eaten nearly enough in awhile.” 

Caduceus places the small bundle on the floor and Caleb is infinitely grateful he didn't drop it on one of the beds. The others might think it disgraceful if they saw it, an insult towards him even, but Caleb would never fathom touching any of it if it was placed on a bed. 

He still doesn't want to eat. 

His teeth taste like ash and his throat feels like cotton, his stomach twisted into claws of nauseum. 

“The others are downstairs still if you wanted to join them.” 

Caleb shakes his head.

He's content here.

Here is easier, here is a smaller room with less possibilities and less unknowns and less to think about. 

“I kind of figured you'd say that.” 

The firbolg stands up from where he had crouched, turning back towards the door and heading back out, towards the others.

Caleb watches him go, waits for that door to latch shut. 

He stares at the bundle. It's wrapped in a pleasant fabric of soft pink. 

He doesn't know what to do now. 

His head spins and dulls with hunger, the lack of nourishment weighing down on him and making him feel like he isn't exactly here. It's hard to tell where the edges of himself end and begin. And when he closes his eyes for even the briefest moment he can feel himself list. 

It's been about two weeks without a substantial amount of food now.

He knows that much at least. 

He also knows that he's edging into dangerous territory by not eating. 

But he doesn't want it. He doesn't want any of it. He wants to hollow that part of himself out and let it wither away, and if that means starving himself than so be it. 

~~If he's all skeleton and dust nothing will want to touch him~~.

He doesn't move to touch the bundle. 

He doesn't take his eyes off the door. 

He doesn't go to sleep even when others file into the room and tuck in for the night around him. 

He watches the door….

He watches the door….

 

 

\---------------------------//--------------------------

 

 

Molly is nearing utterly and irrevocably smashed and he doesn't even care. 

Whatever it takes to wipe away that look on the cleric's face and the name he had almost uttered to him, that's what Molly needs right now. 

He's leaning on the counter, elbow propped up and finger rapping against his cheek as he smiles down Champ, grin sharp and knowing. The man glances over a ledger in front of him, 

“And what are your preferences, Mister--?” The innkeep starts, glancing up to him.

“Just Molly is fine." he offers, leaning close. "And honestly anyone that'll make me forget my name for awhile.”

The man, who honest to gods owns a brothel jointed tavern, flushes a bit at that.

“Ah, er, well--” Champ scratches at the back of his neck and adjusts his shirt collar, “We have one person that you may find fits that bill quite nicely.” 

“What's their name--?”

“Are you buying more hookers?” Beau inserts herself into the little business deal and Molly levels her with a dead-pan stare. 

“Yes.” 

“Oh--” It's almost like Beau didn't expect him to be so blasé about it, but she quickly recovers. 

“I mean, yeah-- yeah, of course you are, go, uh, go fuck em up I guess.” She shoots him half hearted finger guns and he rolls his eyes. 

“Were you looking for more companionship tonight as well, miss?” 

Molly grins, trapping Beau’s shoulder under his hand when she tries to retreat. 

“Uhm,” Beau pauses and Molly watches her eyes dart to Yasha and there's something guilty there. Champ looks at the monk knowingly and Molly smiles slyly at it all. “ Nope.” 

“You sure, Beau? You seem awfully _tense_?” 

She laughs nervously and Molly is thoroughly enjoying the bloom of red across the back of the monk’s neck. 

“Nope. I'm A-Okay.” 

“You could always join me?” He knows she'll never take it, that he doesn't fit her careful criteria, and he doesn't mean any of the offer in the slightest, but he lives to see her flounder and fluster. 

“Ha! _No_.” Beau rocks back on her heels, lip curling unpleasantly at the thought, “That's a very hard no from me and you know it.”

“I know." He grins, and he really, truly does. “Always worth an ask though.”

Molly shrugs, releasing her shoulder finally when he can tell she's two steps from turning on her heel and decking him just to get out of this situation.

“Enjoy your weird sex and fruit party, but _please_ don't come into our room naked this time.”

She's already halfway back to the table by now so he has to shout over the low din of the bar after her. 

“If all goes according to plan I won't be able to walk afterwards anyways!” 

“Ugh, too much information, man...” she grumbles and he barely catches it from here as she beelines for the table and the seat next to Yasha. 

There's a muffled curse and Molly can see that Fjord has planted his forehead into the table and Jester is positively howling next to him. Caduceus seems oblivious to most of it and when Molly waves the firbolg lazily waves back. 

They're all so _adorable_ and he missed the whole lot of them and gods is he glad that's he's back and that they're back, even their strange plus one. 

He tries to skip over the fact that a particular wizard is missing or that Yasha hasn't spoken to him all night except to cut him off. His brain is a bit muddled by the comforting veil of alcohol anyways, his chest warm and lively, the guilt and the things he doesn't like to feel are still crouched in his head, but they are dulled and shoved aside like they should be. 

Champ clears his throat and Molly twirls back around, leaning heavily against the countertop and drumming his fingers. 

“Their name is Ithyla.” 

He smirks. That's quite the name indeed. He briefly wonders if they are an elf but it doesn't really matter at the end of the day honestly. 

“They will meet you in the fourth room to the left,” Champ marks something off, “Five gold per hour.” 

“How about all night?”

Champ blinks, “Uhm-- Well--- That'll be--” 

Molly just pushes the entire small stack of platinum he had gnabbed his way. It was never his to begin with anyways and he might as well get rid of it. Especially with all the blood it's steeped in.

“Will ten platinum suffice?” 

Champ gapes, eyeing the shining coin. “Frankly that's far too muc-” 

“Don't worry about it, I have a feeling you're good on your word,” He pats the man's frozen hand and turns away.

 

He makes his way up the stairs, all too eager to forget about everything for a little while. 

He opens the door once he arrives to it and is rendered effectively speechless by the figure inside. 

Their skin is a draped copper, shining a cool bronze under the moonlight. A thin, diaphanous red swathes their shoulders and spills to the floor and Molly can't help but stare as they rise. There's a tilt to their lips, eyes like liquid caramel and soft, but sharp with something he knows is mirrored in his own. Their hair is a dark cascading wave of ringlets that glints a flinty charcoal in the low candle light and he watches those wavers of light, enraptured.

He doesn't move from where the door has slid shut behind him, utterly transfixed and brain dumbly stuttering around alcohol and the image of svelte perfection that approaches him. 

“You're quite the specimen,” their voice weaves like flickers of fire. 

Warm fingers trail over the scars on his neck and down his chest, a hand pressing over his sternum, encompassing the silvered mess their entirely. He's caught up in the dusting of almost golden freckles across their cheeks and he can't form a coherent sentence to save his life right now. For probably once in his entire short life he's at a complete loss for words. 

Their hand trails up his neck, cups the side of his face and it's warm and beckoning like fire. He leans into it, eyes slipping closed and a tension bleeding from his shoulders. 

“Don't worry, I can help you forget.” They lean up, pressed along the length of him and breath against his ear, “Just for a little while.” 

It's all moonlight and bronze and a fire that he falls into eagerly, chasing away the things in his head with its light-- even if it's only for a moment. 

 

 

 

\------------------------------//------------------------

 

 

 

 

Caleb thinks he's drowning. 

He can't sleep. 

He can't eat.

Sometimes he can't breathe. 

Maybe he's been drowning this whole time.

Ten feet beneath the undertow and staring up at the dull refractions of light above him. The ones that do make it to him look like colors, and faces, and sometimes sound like voices, but they're all muffled and swept away as quickly as they appear. Sometimes he thinks he reaches up for that surface, but his wrists are chained by links of shining satin that coil around him in the dark. 

He stays down there. With that bassy rumble, with those memories running over him, and he tries to forget them even as they pull at his skin and rip it back. 

“--aleb?” 

Something touches his shoulder and he startles, blinking and wrenching back from it. 

“Caleb?” 

He blinks. 

It's bright out and he doesn't remember the sun rising or walking outside or how he got into the illusioned cart in the first place. He doesn't know how long it's been or what day it is either. 

There's voices, but he can't tether them to names. 

“Is he okay?” 

“I don't know, do you think he might be sick?” 

“He looks very pale…” 

“...and far thinner than usual.” 

“...when was the last time anyone saw him eat?” 

“...the cell.” 

“I tried to get him some food last night, but he didn't touch it.” 

“Can a healing spell cure starvation?” 

“I can certainly try.” 

There's fingertips on his shoulder, light and barely there. There's a rush of warmth that bursts like spring and life and is cold like death at the end. 

“I don't think it does anything.”

“Oh, no, no, no---” 

“What do we do?” 

“I have a goodberry left over from Nila.” 

“Try and get him to eat it.” 

“‘kay.” 

Someone kneels in front of him and he wonders how he got on the ground, or maybe he's sitting on wood, he can't tell. 

“Hey… Caleb..." Fingers grab his own, unfurling them where he's wrapped them around his ankles. 

There's something small and round placed into his palm.

“You need to eat this, man.” 

“Please, Caleb.”

He lets it tumble out of his hand.

Nothing happens for a moment.

There's a loud cracking sound and he startles. 

“Son of a fucking---!” 

“Beau, fuckin’ chill down!” 

“I'm gonna rip that fucking piece of shit out of hell and kill him again!” 

There's another crack, accompanied by the splintering of wood and he presses away from it. 

“Beau! Stop!” 

“What the fuck are we supposed to do?! Watch him starve to death?!”

“I don't know, but throwing a tantrum won't do any good.”

“Yeah, and what the fuck do you know, Molly? Huh? You have some grand master plan? Know how to fix this right up don't you?” 

“No, but at least I'm not acting like a child.” 

There's a scuffling sound and someone shouts, followed by the distinct sound of something heavy hitting the dirt. 

“Don't fucking touch me! You don't know shit you fucking rainbow asshole!” 

“You two cut that shit out right now!” 

“ _I_ don't know shit?! What the hell do you know that I don't, huh?!” 

“Molly, back off! Beau, stand down!” 

“Don't tell me what the fuck to do Fjord! I'm tired of this asshole thinking he has the solution for everything!” 

“I never said I did!” 

“You sure as fuck act like it!” 

“It's called being confident! Maybe look it up someti--!” 

There's the crack of something hard against flesh and the same sound as before. 

“Beau!” 

“Guys, stop!” 

“Someone grab her!”

“Yasha, grab Molly!” 

“You don't know _anything_! You weren't even there!” 

“You think I don't know that! You dont think I'm just trying to make things a little bit bette--!” 

Another crack.

“Shut the fuck up! What the fuck do you know about making things better!?”

“... I can at least… try to fix this…” The voice is much more subdued, slurred even. 

“You can't fix this! This isn't something you can just sew a patch on like your stupid coat!” 

“Beau.” That voice resonates like distant thunder and cuts in sharp, like lightning, “Stop.”

There's the sound of someone spitting off to the side, “Don't _ever_ touch me again,” there's footsteps that fade away. 

“...don't plan on it.” 

There's just the sounds of breathing and rustling and what he assumes is everyone trying to right themselves.

“...Caleb?”

There's green in front of him, framing yellow that peer at him and he squints when there's a flash of red at the sight of them. 

“Will you please eat this?” 

He shakes his head. 

“Why not?” Her voice is shaky and laced with water. 

“Can't.” 

“I don't understand---” 

“Won't let me.” 

The hands won't let him, the satin won't let him, the worthlessness won't let him, the desire to wither away won't let him, _he_ won't let him. 

“But you'll di-” the voice stutters and stops, “please…” 

He tilts his head. He doesnt think he wants to die. Not actively. But if it rose up to meet him he also doesn't think he would put up much of a fight. 

~~Weak~~.

~~Sick~~.

~~Broken~~. 

“We can try again...later....once Ophelia's entourage stops and we have a place to camp for the night.” 

The green doesn't leave his vision though, and fingers curl around his own and he thinks he might hold them back, but there's a lot of grey down where he is and it's hard to tell.

 

 

-

\-------------------------//-----------------------------

 

 

All he had done was jab Beau in the chest with his finger after she decided to throw a temper tantrum in the cart and suddenly he was on his back, blinking up at the sky. 

He coughs, brain still trying to connect how he got here and why the breath has been knocked out of him. 

“Don't fucking touch me! You don't know shit you fucking rainbow asshole!” 

Oh, right. 

_That._

She hops off the cart after him and he scrambles to his feet, there's something burning under his sternum and it's most definitely anger. 

Because he _would_ know shit if one of them would just open their mouths and say shit to him, but none of them will and he's tired of it. Tired of watching them flinch and startle and go quiet and he can't do anything to stop it. 

Fjord shouts something from the cart, vaulting off of it himself and Molly ignores him. There's only the pound of blood in his ears and a frustration that has him grinding his teeth. Beau is talking down to him, like he is an idiot in all of this, and he doesn't like it at all. 

“ _I_ don't know shit?! What the fuck do you know that I don't, huh?!” He spits, tail whipping and fists balled at his sides, he doesn't even flinch back as the monk bears down on him, his own hand drifting for his blade. 

“Molly, back off! Beau, stand down!” 

Beau whips around and snarls at the approaching half-orc, face wrinkled and all but feral. “Don't tell me what the fuck to do Fjord!” There's something like fear underneath the anger, but it's buried underneath the burn in her eyes as she jabs a finger back towards his chest. "I'm tired of this asshole thinking he has the solution for everything!” 

He doesn't.

He really doesn't.

He _wants_ a solution to everything, yes. But he doesn't _know_ everything. Honestly in this situation he knows so little it makes him want to take a swing at her for coming at him about this. 

“I never said I did!” 

Beau sneers, looking down her nose at him, knuckles white from where she's gripping her bo staff. "You sure as fuck act like it!” 

He laughs and he can't help it, he watches the bitter withered thing bounce off of Beau and the monk only scowls harder. “It's called being confident! Maybe look it up someti--!” 

There's a burst of stars and he stumbles, hand flying up to his face where it feels like a stampede just rammed into it. 

She hit him. 

She _fucking_ hit him. 

He snarls, eyes narrowed at the monk who's only growling harder. 

“You don't know _anything_! You weren't even there!” She bites out and it _stings_. 

He knows he wasn't there. He can't help that he wasn't there for them. Can't help that it took him far too long to get them out. He can't help it and he doesn't want her to look at him like that. 

“You think I don't know that! You dont think I'm just trying to make things a little bit bette--!” 

There's stars again and he wobbles, falling back before catching himself. His head is pounding and he thinks there's black spots dancing in his vision now. He traces them dazedly, ignoring the shouting and cries from beyond. 

“Shut the fuck up! What the fuck do you know about making things better!?”

He doesn't---

There's a hand steadying him and he leans into it. 

“... I can at least… try to fix this…” He needs to fix it. He has to. He huffs it out, following a particularly bright burst of red across his vision. 

Beau laughs and its dry and withered, cracked in all the wrong ways. Her voice tight with a fear he doesn't remember ever being there before and it's all wrong. “You can't fix this! This isn't something you can just sew a patch on like your stupid coat!” 

He winces back. 

That one hurt more than when she was just hitting him.

“Beau,” Yasha warns from beside him, her hand firm on his shoulder and he has a feeling she's both shielding him and keeping him back. “Stop.”

Beau's eyes jump around to the gathered party, frantic and still tight with fury, back to Caleb and Nott still in the cart, to Jester who is trying to hold back the tears brewing along her lashes. The blue tiefling darts her eyes between them and the look on her face makes Molly's chest hurt more than the venom Beau had spit into those insecure places he likes to hide from them. 

“Don't _ever_ touch me again.” 

He watches Beau stalk off and he can't help but feel like this was his fault all along. Maybe he shouldn't have poked her so much. Maybe he shouldn't have touched her when he could tell she was starting to lose it.

He doesn't know, but whatever he did it just hurts, _a lot_ , and he wants it to go away. 

“...don't plan on it,” He huffs and tries to smirk, tries to pretend like everything she said isn't eating at him. That he just brushed it off as easily as everything else. 

But he knows it's stuck in there. 

“I'll go after her…” Fjord sighs, trudging after the monk. 

“Are you okay, Molly?”

“I'm fine, Jester.” He isn't, but he doesn't want her to heal the pounding in his skull, because maybe he deserves it. "We need to catch up with Ophelia's carriage...Come on."

He doesnt know how it went from joking around at a bar, from teasing and good natured ribbing, to actual punches being thrown at him. He can't help but know that it's his fault for abandoning them, for dying on the side of the road, for jumping headfirst into everything like he usually does. 

The guilt curls up along with the other threads of it now in him, and he watches that weave slowly grow larger. 


	12. Conversations

They stop along the side of an unfamiliar stretch of road. 

There's a smattering of strange lone standing rocks that rise like sentinels in the blank rolling canvas of grass. The occasional sparse tree can be seen in the distance, but otherwise it is a highly exposed, highly vulnerable stretch of land. He blinks and suddenly there's a fire and he's propped up near it, leaned back against one of the large rocks he remembers seeing. There's voices and shapes in front of him, blocking the fire light and he squints up at them. 

“----how do we get him to eat?” 

“I don't know.” 

“Does anyone know why he won't?” 

There's a lull of hushed quiet after that and he relaxes into that quiet because at least it doesn't send his head buzzing full of flies. 

Someone kneels beside him. 

“Caleb?” 

He blinks-----

There's a hand on his forehead. 

“Did he just black out?” 

“I -- I think so.” 

“Can someone get, Fjord?” 

“He's talking to Beau right now, do we need him?” 

“Wasn't sure if he had seen anything like this on his-- boats or-- or whatever before, but it doesn't matter…” 

Another person kneels next to him, significantly smaller than the other, green where the other is blue.

“Caleb, you need to eat this.” 

He shakes his head, world tilting and spinning with the movement.

His mouth is coated in ash and iron.

“If you don't eat it, _I_ won't eat.” 

“Nott--” 

“No,” her voice is firm and biting, “this is the only way to get him to give a shit about himself.” 

The threat sticks and he thinks his fingers are trembling, but they are far away and disconnected. 

She can't not eat. She needs to live. He needs her to live. She's all he has left. He can't bring her down with him. 

He can't. 

But he's being forced to choose between her and something else again and he doesn't want to make that choice. She knows which one he'll choose, she knows it and it feels like he's powerless again, but it's… it's her this time, so it can't be malicious…. It can't be….right? 

It still hurts though. 

He wants to say no. 

He wants to refuse.

But he can't.

He takes the small round object that's placed in his fingers. It feels like it weighs as much as the world in his palm. It feels like something he doesn't want. It feels like _everything_ he doesn't want. He presses it past the seam of his lips and the only thing keeping him from immediately gagging is the fact that he has to do this or watch Nott starve beside him again. 

There's the insidious burst of something sweet on his tongue and for a moment he thinks it's stringy and tender, tainted with iron and blood and he---

“Woah, hey!” 

“No, no, no, don't vomit, please.” 

He manages to hold it in, but there's acid burning the back of his throat.His ribs hurt and his head hurts and he wants to stop, but they're all watching him and he knows they're looking down on him because he can't even eat properly. 

~~Can't eat properly, can't sleep properly, can't _be_ properly. ~~

He knows that they know that he was twisted apart and put back together with things in the wrong sockets, but he was hoping it would be easier to conceal away and let fester. They keep pressing him though, keep finding him, keep coming for him when he just wants to wither in the dark and they keep picking apart the things in his skull he doesn't want them to see. 

He thinks, maybe… maybe he resents them for it. 

The thing in his mouth fades with a sharp bite of magic on his tongue. There's a rush of warmth down his limbs and he's snapped out of his comforting limbo whether he wants to be or not. 

He blinks and he's staring up at the moon. 

It's waning, a crescent of insidious black bitten out of the top of it. The second one is ensconced in its light, only a miniscule red dot in comparison. He thinks he understands that one, he can see how hard it's trying to fade into the back drop and he envies it's ability to do so. It doesn't have people that keep ripping it into the light against its will. 

There's footsteps that color the air alongside the low murmuring around him and the snap of damp wood in the fire. He watches a familiar monk stomp her way up to an even more familiar lavender tiefling who looks a bit harried by her approach, who keeps flitting the occasional concerned glance his way that stings. 

“Fjord told me I needed to apologize for being a massive asshole.” 

The monk extends her hand, the tiefling almost instinctively recoils from it the tiniest hair, but Caleb's eyes are sharp where his mind is still a bit fuzzy and dulled and he doesn't miss a moment of it. He doesn't miss the downwards tilt of Molly's lip or the nervous tension across the tielfing’s shoulders as he curls his hand around hers. 

“Apology accepted,” It sounds sincere but there's something behind it he can't place.

“Whatever…,” She crosses her arms and takes a seat beside the fire. 

There's another pair of footsteps and Fjord enters the ring of light as well, brow furrowed and immediately looking towards him. 

“Did he eat anything yet?” 

He doesn't like how they talk around him, like he isn't there. It reminds him of the way the slavers used to do it. The way they discuss his well being, discuss the things they need to do to him like he is just some mutt. 

“He did..." Nott settles next to him, facing the fire now and close enough to his side that he can almost feel the warmth from her in the biting chill of the air.

The half orc nods, pursing his lips, settling near the fire as well. The others seem to take it as a cue and soon enough they're all sitting in a loose ring around the flickering flames. 

There's a few beats of silence, a settling quiet that's woven with the lace of hardy crickets and the stirrings of the tall grass around them.

“Where did you have one of those tucked away that it wasn't confiscated?” Fjord breaks the tension, brow quirked.

“Don't ask, don't tell.”

Molly grimaces, nose wrinkling. 

“Ugh.. don't be nasty,” Beau rolls her eyes, “They didn't check the false pocket on my pants, dumb ass.” 

Jester snorts making finger quotes in the air, “Your ‘false pocket’.”

There's the sound of a twig snapping, of the rustle of grass and the approach of something. He turns his head to face it. It's a grey skinned tiefling, her hair a long cascading wave and horns tall against the blacks above. She stops, looking them all over, eyes settling on him and he thinks he must look like absolute shit, because he can see her shoulders tense uncomfortably. 

“Is he ill?” The grey toned tiefling curls her lip, looking down at him distastefully. 

~~Yes.~~

“No,” Nott bites back, bristling and Caleb can tell she wants the tiefling to go away. 

“I'll keep my distance anyways." She looks him over, blank slate yellows cold and calculating. “Just in case." She drifts off, back to her own carriage, dismissing them.

~~He would keep his distance too if he could~~.

“She's kind of a bitch,” Beau mutters once the tiefling leaves, crossing her arms. 

“Wait, didn't you think she was hot the first time we met her?” Nott asks, quirking a brow.

Beau looks off to the side, arms pressing tighter, “No.” 

“I won't say she isn't,” Molly adds. 

“Of course you would…” Beau grumbles, but it's half hearted and there's still a tension lying between the two even if it's lessened significantly, “You think _everyone's_ hot.” 

Molly cocks his head, smile sharp, “Just the pretty ones.” 

“I mean, not gonna lie, she's a bit... intense,” Fjord huffs, sitting back against the cart's wheel. 

“Don't like strong women, huh, Fjord?”

The half-orc flushes, “No-- I--- Uh, just mean that she's----”

“Looks like she's picking you apart with her eyes?” 

Fjord snaps his fingers, pointing at Caduceus. “That.” 

“What do you think the Gentleman wants with her? Why are we going through all of this effort to escort her back?” Nott asks, looking to all of them with wide eyes. 

Caleb is half-listening, half trying not to look at the fire. 

“Oh, maybe they're secret lovers?” Jester gasps, hands on her knees and leaning forward, the fire illuminating her grin. “What if this is like a uber, super, secret mission to reunite them after they've been apart for so long because she wasn't safe in the city with him?” 

Molly snorts, “I don't think the Gentleman is on Ophelia Mardoon's list of potential suitors.” 

“Why not? He's handsome enough for her, right?” Jester tilts her head.

“I have a feeling she likes to have someone beneath her heel and I don't think the Gentleman is someone who is willing to kneel, even for someone like her.” 

“Would you?”

Molly hums, tapping his chin, grin curling his lips “As a matter of fact, I _would_ consider it.” 

“You would get on your knees for anyone as long as they vaguely appealed to whatever your aesthetic is,” Beau grumbles out of the side of your mouth.

His head hurts at that, his temple pounding. There's something pushing at the edge of his consciousness and everything feels like it's frozen around him, suspended in a watery sepia---

__

_“You would get on your knees for anyone as long as they had this wouldn't you?”_

_He's choking, there's a hand twisted into the back of the leather cord around his neck and its pulling and he thinks it might snap where it's pressing into his windpipe and cutting off his words._

_“I--” He scrabbles against the fingers, more afraid of losing the amulet than his life._

_“Pathetic.”_

__

He snaps back into their conversation like no time has passed at all, his heart trying to hammer it's way out of his ribs. 

“Okay." Fjord puts his hands up, face deep green. “We stop that conversation right there.”

Molly laughs and it rings, bright and silver. It sounds like moonlight and Caleb tries to distract himself with it. 

“Caleb?”

He startles, looking away from the spot of color and back to Nott, familiar greens and yellows greeting him. 

“Are you feeling any better?” 

He pauses. 

“Ja.” 

No. 

The goodberry sits heavily in the pit of him. 

He didn't want it.

But if he didn't eat it then Nott wouldn't eat either and then he would be back at square one. She needs to stay healthy and he can't drag her down because of his own selfish fears and desires. 

He can't help but feel frustrated at the lack of a choice though. 

At the powerlessness it makes him feel. 

“Okay… Try and get some sleep tonight too if you can.” 

“Sure…”

She frowns, glancing to the others, and he can tell she's not convinced but he doesn't feel like putting any effort behind a mask or a smile.

They can take whatever they want from his silence. 

~~They already took away his decision to starve.~~

 

\----------

 

 

They travel for three days after that, much of it a muted blur of color and sound that passes him by like the miles beneath his feet.

There are snippets he remembers though, times when the sun waned into nothing and the moons loomed overhead, ever watchful, and they came to him on the outskirts of camp. 

Beau was the first to sit beside him where he had set up at the edge of the fire's light, away from where he can see Caduceus and Jester cooking and laughing, their faces softly illuminated. Molly joins the two, but seems to quickly get distracted by the prospect of braiding Caduceus’ hair while he works and the firbolg doesn't offer up any protests. Caleb watches the weave of purple fingers, enraptured by the rhythmic process of the procedure and misses Beau clearing her throat at his side. 

“So….”, she starts and he's drawn away from where he can see a weaved tapestry being made out of pink hair. 

“How's it, uh...hangin’?” Beau visibly winces once the words leave her mouth, like she already regrets the lazy disinterest of them. 

The monk sighs when he doesn't answer, her hand fiddling with the ribbons on her pants, and he thinks she's nervous but that can't be right. She isn't someone who gets nervous. 

“Sorry, stupid question, I know,” she sighs. 

Caleb wonders if Fjord's influence has taught her to start to recognize her lack of tactfulness. 

The monk worries at the center of her palm, thumb mashing into the muscles there and kneading at them. 

“Look I, uh…” She clears her throat, darting glances off to the side where Caleb can now see a sentinel Yasha leaned up against a tree beyond the fire. 

“I wanted to say thank you.” 

It takes him a moment, but he finally breathes out two words into the ambient black, “For what?” 

“Whatever you took my place on.” 

He freezes.

“Yasha didn't go into details, but she feels pretty bad about whatever it was still and like, just--” He can hear the grind of her teeth, “Do you ever wish you could kill him again?” 

He's taken off guard by the sudden question and more so by the sudden burning snapping rage that bubbles and roils at the thought of snapping the slaver to pieces beneath his hands. It's alarmingly aggressive and it snaps at the heels of the anxiety at the mention of _him_.

He doesn't have to ask to know who she's talking about. 

“....yes.” 

She steamrolls over his whispered affirmation, punching her hand into her palm and snarling. “Because I wish I could break his fucking face in a thousand different ways. I wanna just--” Her hands form into claws over her chest and she pulls them apart like she's ripping open his ribcage right now. “I wanna tear him the fuck apart and make him go through all the fucking things he put us through and see how the fuck he likes it.” 

And she's panting, chest heaving and her mere presence is alight with a fury that almost sears the edges of him. It falters and Caleb looks up from his own hands curled limply in his lap to see Beau staring at where Yasha has moved to join the group near the fire, her hands gently twisting a braid into Molly’s hair while he continues on Caduceus’. 

There's something like grief pressed into the lines of her face, or maybe it's loss, and he wonders how much Yasha told her of what happened upstairs that day when she was taken away. 

“But now he's dead and there's nothing to hit and I've never… I've never been good at all the shit that comes after.” 

He wants to say me too. 

He wants to offer something grandiose and worthwhile, give her the advice she needs, but there's nothing there. 

Because he isn't good at this either. He's good at repressing it, pushing it down and letting it eat at him. He never came to terms with his parents death, never accepted it and moved on. He only accepted it as a fact that he could change in the future when he's powerful enough to bend reality, and he _knows_ there's something unhealthy about that, but he doesn't care. And with this, this has sidled up alongside it and curled up around it-- joined that singular goal. 

He will change it at _whatever_ the cost when the time comes. 

~~Even if it erases his entire existence.~~

 

“Do you think she's gonna be okay?” It's such a raw question from her, so quiet and vulnerable he's afraid to answer it. 

Yasha is smiling now, it's thin and barely there, but he can see how it lifts her face. Jester has noticed their train of braiding and presumably jealous she's moved to braid what she can of Yasha's short hair in turn and the cooking has been left to Caduceus alone as they all sit in a weird chain. Caleb can't help but huff out a small amused breath at the sight of it. 

“I think she will,” he can't say the same for himself though. 

Beau just nods, jerkily, shifting her jaw and balling her fists like she's still looking for something to take her frustration out on. 

“And you know I'm not…” She shifts, folding her legs under her and looking for all the world like she wants to be anywhere else but here. “I won't lie, Yasha may not have told me everything but I'm not stupid. I've seen things.”

He stiffens, ice crackling behind his ribs and creeping up his throat. 

“Shitty awful things done to people that didn't deserve them and I just wanted to say…”

~~He might have deserved it though.~~

“...if you ever want to talk about it… I'm here.” 

He doesn't answer and she doesn't push him and it's comfortable this way.

He thinks even though she's extended her offer and he knows he'll never take it that she wouldn't know what to do after the fact anyways. 

He wouldn't know what to do either. 

He says nothing.

He lets her walk away. 

He watches her go and he knows he'll never say it out loud. 

 

\-------- ------- --------

 

On the second night it's Jester. 

She saunters up to where he's propped up against a tree, thin flimsy bed roll beneath him and staring up at the moon above. She teeters at his peripheral, rocking back and forth on her heels, tail swishing and a hand coming up to wave at him like he hasn't noticed her yet. 

“Hello, Cay-leb~" it's sing-songy, sunny, and everything it's supposed to be. 

Her eyes flick down to the scarf he hasn't taken off since he got it, her eyes shining warmly and a beaming smile curling to her ears. 

“I think Fjord made a good choice with the scarf, don't you? I mean, _technically_ I helped him pick it out after all so it was definitely a good choice." She nods, crossing her arms smugly.

He curls his fingers into the woven blue, it's still soft and textured and smells like something spiced and warm that settles the nerves along the back of his neck. 

He nods, unsure what to say, how to convey the things in his head. 

Her facade falters, her eyes distant and wary as she rubs at her arm, the fingers pressing into the repaired sleeve. And he can see the weave of red thread in it against the creams and white, and she looks off to the side. 

“I never got to to say thanks for-- for the _thing_ that happened back there and--,” she huffs out a breath, hand tangling in the gold chain on her belt. “And I--”

She's never been one to lose her words like him or Yasha, and some of the others. She's always know what to say, like Molly, whip-quick and witty in the right ways. This version of Jester isn't right, it isn't the image of her in his head and it starts to confuse him. 

He wants it to stop. 

 

“Sometimes I forget people are like that you know...” she mutters.

He feels a cracked and broken laugh in his chest, but he lets it die before it leaves. 

He forgot that too. But now it's all he can think about sometimes. 

“That…..That they can be ugly like that. That they can do those things to other people. That they're willing to do _that_ at all." Jester swipes at her face, huffing out a breath and toying with the mismatched thread in her dress that mends the sleeve he remembers hearing rip in the din light of a cell under the harsh breathing of hungry, slobbering hounds. 

Caleb doesn't know what to say. 

He doesn't know how people are willing to do it at all either. 

He can't imagine taking someone's power away like that. 

He can't imagine seeking to break them down. 

But it happens all the time.

It happened to him and he thought he was safe from things like that too. 

 

“My momma… she never really has a problem with people like that. W-with people who think they can do what they want to someone else. She's respected, feared even for what her other clients can do if they was found out that someone was a little too forward, a little too, you know, handsy or whatever.” Jester laughs, sardonic and bitter and it's all wrong coming from her. “And I thought if it got too far, if things got that bad, that _he_ would help me, you know?” 

And she's looking at the symbol of an archway embedded with gemstones clipped to her side, fingers running over it but the purple in her eyes is hard and withdrawn. 

“But he wasn't there and you were and just…just--" She flings her arms around him before he can recoil, buries her face into the crook of his neck and he goes still at the feeling of tears on his skin. He doesn't stop her, doesn't pull away from the fingers he can feel fisted into the back of his coat. 

“Thank you..." She shakes and trembles as she breathes the words against him, and something cracks in his chest. 

He numbly wraps his arms around her in return, reflexively, like he knows she's trying not to crumble to pieces against him. He can help keep her together even if the breath against his neck sends his thoughts reeling in all the worst ways. He lets her spill her pent up fear and anger and sadness there, into him, where he collects it. 

"It's okay..." he mutters, the words hollow and empty, but maybe it's what Jester needs to hear here.

Because none of those things, the pain, the sadness, the anxiety of it-- none of it was ever meant for any of them. It can all find a home in him among everything else he keeps down there, writhing and reaching for him. And he doesn't regret what he did. Not when she's a bit chipped by it all. He knows she'll be fine eventually, that she'll put all of her pieces back together and come out the other side. He doesn't regret the things done to him later if he was able to keep her from this. 

There's footsteps in the dark, grass shifting and leaves crunching under boots. 

Fjord wanders over and Jester quickly collects herself, backing off, reflexively smiling like nothing ever happened when she faces the worried half-orc. But her eyes are tinged and tight as she hooks her arm into his and tries to drag Fjord off. 

But the half-orc plants his feet though, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Just a sec, Jes.” 

The tiefling’s smile falters, but she nods, making her way towards the small fire smoldering further into their little camp.

Fjord sits down close to him, leaning against a tree just to the right of him with the protest of leather, his armor sliding and shifting. The half-orc tilts his head back against the bark and Caleb watches him, unsure what he wants, insides feeling raw and exposed after Jester had briefly collapsed against him. 

“Hey...” it's soft and quiet and it feels like an offering, extended across a gap between them.

He doesn't say anything back, just turns to look back up at the moon. A minute or so passes, the night filled with chirrups and the stirrings of unseen beasts.

“Do you ever…” Fjord clears his throat, like he's deliberating saying it or not. “ Do you ever think about where we would all be if we never met each other in that bar that day?” 

Caleb's brow furrows and the moon looks like it's glaring back at him. 

“No.” 

It's hard for him to imagine anything besides his current scenario. Those extrapolations and wishes held back by a past that's burnt and pressed into his skin. 

“Well... I do… sometimes.” 

He frowns. He doesn't know why the half-orc is being so open about his faltering assuredness in their situation. He doesn't understand why Fjord's spilling these questions of fate onto him. Maybe he thinks Caleb has questions regarding these things to. 

He doesn't. 

But his brain knows what to say, so he lets it. 

“Do you regret coming with us?” 

“No, I just--”, Fjord huffs out a sardonic chuckle, “Didn't expect things to turn out quite like this.” 

Caleb laughs and it tastes like ash. 

He didn't either. 

He couldn't have ever conjured this up in his head. 

Dying; yes. Being maimed and robbed and left to die on the edge of a road; sure. Chained up, held at the mercy of a creature, and turned into a plaything under it; no. 

“And sometimes I question what I'm supposed to be doing now. Like, maybe this isn't what I'm supposed to be doing you know? Maybe this isn't where I'm supposed to be.” 

“You want answers, right?” Caleb asks after a long moment. 

He doesn't have to look at Fjord to know the half-orc knows what he's talking about. 

“Well, yeah. Of course I do.” 

“There's your purpose...”

It's quiet for a moment and then there's a chuckle and a surprised, ‘Huh.’

“Well I didn't really think of it like that, but yeah, I guess you're right.” The half-orc, pillows his arms behind his head and settles in and Caleb has a feeling he won't be leaving anytime soon. 

“Thanks, Caleb.”

And there it is again. Everyone keeps thanking him for things he doesn't even want to be thanked for. It's just words, just actions, just him making sure this delicately balanced team doesn't fall apart around him at whatever cost, because he _needs them to survive._

None if it is worth their thanks. 

“For everything I mean...” Fjord continues and he wilts into himself, nails biting at the scabs on his knuckles and tearing it open with a dull bite of pain. 

He doesn't want to hear this. 

“You didn't have to come for us. You and Nott could have taken off and ran and you would have never ended up in that dungeon with us.” 

He could have run, but he didn't. And now he's here and he's not sure how it would have ended up differently, because how could it have? This is most likely just the universe reminding him where he stands in the order of things. Beneath the heel of someone else. 

“And thank you for keeping Jester safe...I know she won't ever admit it bothered her... not to me at least, but it means a lot that you would do that for her, for any of us. You didn't have to put yourself in the line of fire for us, but you did and I... well I appreciate that a lot.”

The thanks burns more than their pity. 

And he doesn't even know if they know what they are thanking him for. He doesn't even know if they still would if they did know. Doesn't know if they would curl their lips and sneer, look down on him for being weak, for giving in, for saying _yes_ to it. 

There's this heavy coiled knot lodged in his gut when he thinks about what they would tell him if they weren't so keen on dodging around it, and if he wasn't so keen on avoiding it. 

 

 

\----------

-

 

The third night is Nott and he doesn't talk to her at all. 

He pretends he's asleep, that he's finally succumbed to the exhaustion weighing on his bones, but he still can't. He can't sleep because what if this is the dream and he's still stuck in that nightmare? He only pretends so they won't ask questions, so they won't worry about him. He lets them draw their own conclusions about the bruising under his eyes. And he only eats enough for them to stop worrying, but not enough to fill out his skin. He's only human enough so that they'll look away. 

He keeps his breath even and still when he hears her footsteps, the raspy slide of bandages against the grass and the shortened gait betraying her. She sits at the head of his little bed, close enough to the top of his skull that he can feel the warmth of her there, but he doesn't move or twitch or indicate that he's aware of her. 

There's a moment where something hovers over his hair and he knows it's her hand. It's strange how he can almost feel it there, cutting off the soft breeze that played across it and radiating a warm presence. She sighs, withdrawing it and his chest loosens at the retreat. 

“I know you lied to me, Caleb.”

He has to stop his breath from hitching, keeps himself carefully unreactive, more scared to face her head on than hear what she has to say. 

“B-back in that cell... I-- I--”, she shifts and he can hear her fiddling with something. 

“I know you're not okay and I knew you weren't okay then either....and I know you're trying to protect me and hide me from those things but…” She sighs and he can almost hear the weight on her shoulders, the things pressing down on her. He wants to shoulder them for her, but he can't. “You don't need to, Caleb.” 

He does though. He has to. 

“Not anymore and not right now.”

He will always.

“And I wish you'd just tell me. That you'd stop trying to keep me safe from it. I--” 

He can't tell her this. Can't have her connect the fact that she's missing a finger on her hand because he couldn't just stay quiet and be compliant. That he's pathetic for having put himself before her in that moment. 

“And I know you love these people… I--I know you won't ever admit it, but I know you do... and I know you want to keep them safe but they-- they love you too, Caleb. And they're… _we're_ all worried about you.” 

They don't need to worry about him. He's fine. He'll be fine. 

“We just want to make sure you're gonna be okay." She carefully tucks something under his hand, it's rough and runs across his fingertips like parchment.

He doesn't open his eyes until he can hear her footsteps recede away. 

He slowly pulls the parchment back into himself, curls around it so the others can't see he's awake when he looks it over. He scans the pockmarked page. There's burns on the edges, burnt and curling inward, but he would know this anywhere.

Something in him, something coiled and tight and wound so firmly that he can hardly breathe through it, snaps. 

His spine hunches even further and he bites down on the relieved sob that's trying to inch up his throat, chokes it back down where it can rest silently. 

Because he can get his cat back. 

He can finally bring Frumpkin back.


	13. Storms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter brought to you by my own garbage emotional healing.

Molly has never been more glad to see other people on the road in all his life. There's finally a stream of intermittent carts moving along the road opposite them and it's a nice reminder they are finally encroaching on civilised society. 

Everything has thankfully been relatively smooth sailing so far since Shady Creek Run (minus the minor hiccup with the goodberry) and they've made some pretty good progress so far, even made up for a day's worth of lost time. 

Before they left they had taken a detour to complete the Gentleman's request and the visit to the Mardoon’s manor had certainly been an interesting one. 

He hadn't missed that stutter though. The others didn't seem to have noticed it when it happened thankfully.

Caduceus maybe, but the firbolg wouldn't fathom why it was suspicious….hopefully. He would just know that it happened and move on to more important things. 

Molly still isn't sure why Ophelia had paused on him. 

He didn't garner anything from her in the moment and he doesn't think he's ever met her before. It was only the briefest of pauses anyways. A part of him jokes that she might have been star struck by him. Another knows what the beginnings of recognition look like. He doesn't particularly want to poke that bear with a stick either way. He is all for avoiding any new knowledge regarding who he used to be and if she has any of it... well, it will disappear or die _with_ her, because he would not be knocking at that gate for an answer anytime soon. 

Molly plays the small, cut ruby between his fingers, tossing it up idly before catching it and repeating the process in a slow metronomic trance. 

He still hasn't asked Caleb to identify it. The others haven't asked for it back either, and he thinks they might have overlooked it in their desire to avoid the subjects and topics brought up by the contents in the little bag to begin with. 

And they are all very terribly good at dodging around each other about it. About all of it really. 

They can't have been together more than two month or so now (him even less considering he lost them for nearly two weeks of that time), so he doesn't _really_ blame them for not spilling the events of what happened down in that dungeon to him. 

Is it frustrating though? 

Yes. But understandable all the same. 

He would not tell these people any of those things either, no matter how much it started to eat at him. 

He wouldn't want to relive it. Wouldn't want to watch someone's face scrunch and pinch the whole time, hear them offer empty sentiment for an irreversible situation they can't even begin to imagine. 

And he knows they don't want to seem weak either (even if he could never possibly think of them that way). That even Jester, of all of them, is clinging so desperately to a facade of constant happiness and normalcy that it's almost jarring when something slips through the cracks. 

He, himself, had _barely_ told them he was just a series of thoughts trapped in a suit of skin and bones that he was never meant to hold the keys to. He had only opened his mouth to say the bare minimum because it became too dangerous to hide it, and even then, a zone of truth had to help him along. 

So _no_ , he doesn't blame them, nor does he pry for explanations. 

But it still hurts. 

It still hurts when he watches them flinch away from him, when they grab his wrist, when they walk away or stare off into space for a little too long. When they wake up in the middle of the night with a choked off scream for a phantom he can't imagine. 

It hurts because he can't take it all away from them. He can't fight the things stalking around in their heads… and gods does he want to. And he can't help but feel incredibly selfish about that feeling.

What gives him the right to feel hurt or frustrated here? What gives him the right to be scared? 

Why should he feel this way when he isn't the one who was branded as someone's property? He isn't the one who had his teeth pulled like they were nothing. He isn't the one who was forced into an unimaginable hell. 

So, what gives him the right? 

He sighs, palming the red gem and glancing over at the quiet wizard a couple feet away from him. Caleb is another enigma altogether. He was quiet and withdrawn before, sure, but nothing like this. He doesn't emote, doesn't move, doesn't even offer a quip or a joke or an off key word to the conversation like he used to when there was in-party fighting. Even when there's the usual squabbles and jibing, or when Beau and him clash heads and it turns ugly. Caleb doesn't react beyond what is required of him to appear ‘normal’ and “alive”. 

It's all very disconcerting.

It's almost like he's missing from his own head. And sometimes when Molly looks at his eyes he can tell that there's someone in there, but he doesn't recognize them. 

Getting him to eat that first time had been a chore in itself too. 

An arduous task for something so small and Molly had feared the man really wanted to waste away. He is eating again at least... not much though. Molly knows that sometimes Caleb will take a larger portion to appease them, but it will never reach his lips.

Molly won't approach him about it. 

What could he even say? What even are the right words to tell a starving man so afraid of a meal that he refuses to eat it?

There are none...none that he knows at least. 

He isn't a healer of the psyche or whatever those flacks at asylums call themselves, nor is he one of those phonies that claims to know the intricate workings of a man's mind, inside and out. 

He is just Molly... and as Molly he is helpless against this enemy. He laughs and it's small, dry, and bitter as he leans back against the side of the cart. 

That's a good euphemism for it. 

‘Helpless.’ 

It's more like useless. 

He tracks his eyes through the clouds above, the sky dipping into the beginnings of oranges and purple. 

He hates thinking like this. 

He hates feeling like this.

It's all so depressing and melancholy and he misses when things were far simpler. 

He wishes he could drown it all in alcohol and a warm bed, but they're still days away from Zadash and they have no plans to stop anywhere with both of those anytime soon. 

 

 

 

\-------------

 

 

 

“Take him the fuck down!”

Molly's not really sure how it happened, but he's dragging Caleb away from where Beau is bearing down on a lumbering troll and shouting. There are scatterings of wolf-like creatures in the dark around them that snarl and circle, excited by the scent of blood. 

He remembers they had settled down for the night and suddenly there had been teeth ripping into his arm and yanking him from his sleep. He had made quick work of that disfigured lupine, but there had been at least ten others, there eyes dancing points of yellow between the trees. He had thought Caleb had taken watch with Nott, but there was just an unconscious wizard and a hulking figure within the throw of light. 

And now, he is here trying to slash out at the lunging dogs with his scimitar and drag Caleb away from them with his injured arm. He's not sure why they are working in tandem with a troll of all things, but he can see the flash of hunger glazing their eyes and slicking their bared teeth. 

There's the sound of a growl behind him and just as he goes to look over his shoulder it turns into a whimpering cry and the wet and slopping splash of viscera. He glances back to see Yasha, her blade slicked in diseased crimson and rage crackling in her eyes, a wolf bisected at her feet. 

He had assumed Caleb was unconscious, but while he's distracted by the scene behind him the weight he's been dragging disappears. 

“Caleb, what the fu---!”

The wizard is already stumbling away and towards where the wolves bearing down on the others, holding his side, red coloring his temple, but his steps as determined as ever. 

“Son of a bitch." Molly flicks the blood off the edge of his blade and stalks off after the stumbling man.

A wolf rushes Caleb from the side and Molly isn't close enough to get between it and him before it's slamming into his side, teeth latched dangerously close to his jugular and they both go down with a heavy thud. The faint fire light dances in Molly's peripherals and all he can see is where the sharpened bone is dug into flesh, crimson splattered across skin and clothes, seeping past the pustuled jowls and Caleb isn't moving. 

The creature unhinges its maw, strings of drool and ichor lining its gums, dripping down its fur as it turns to snarl at him. Molly curls his lip back at it, swiping up with his scimitar and catching it under its chin. It stumbles back and away with a startled bark, hackles raised and eyes crazed. Molly moves until he's poised over the prone wizard, staring down the wolf as it circles him. 

It mock lunges, snapping its teeth with a jarring click, spittle flying from the wrinkled, black lips and soon enough another joins it. He wonders if they can tell Caleb is bleeding out, that he's the most wounded prey of them all. They both circle, slowly, prowling and the sounds of the others fighting as well is audible, but it's background noise as he tries to keep both pairs of jaundiced, gold eyes in sight. 

_“You'll have to get through me first,_ ” He growls at them in infernal.

He won't let them have him. Caleb isn't theirs to tear apart and devour and he'll die before he lets any of these people get hurt again. 

Fed up with his posturing one wolf lunges and Molly flips the scimitar in his grip, dragging it up into an arc and slicing across the thing's underbelly, sundering that vulnerable soft swathe of skin. Viscera pulses past the wound and it flops into the dirt, organs strewn around it in a gruesome halo. The other eyes him, uncaring of its fallen companion and far less injured than the other had been. It lowers itself, muscles bunching at its haunches and Molly plants his feet, scimitar brandished in front of him and he's never missed having two weapons to fight with more than he does now. 

It leaps, teeth flashing a dangerous orange and red in the dying firelight, saliva slicking its curled tongue and face a wrinkled mass around the points of narrowed poison yellow. He catches its parted jaws on his blade, but he severely miscalculated the weight of it and it sends him stumbling back, heel catching on the prone wizard beneath him. He goes down with the wolf snarling around the blade and pinning him down, it's teeth clicking and slipping around the metal, red dripping onto him from where it's lips tear and sunder.

He struggles against it, gritting his teeth and shoving back with everything he has as it bears down on him, jaws searching for his throat. Flames suddenly curl around its face and eat away its eyes until they are melted streams of viscous liquid that trail down the charring skull onto him. The rest of the wolf goes up into cinders and charcoal until it's light enough he s hoves it off where it crumples into bones and nothing. He quickly scrambles to his feet, trying to wipe off the liquefied eyeball splatters with a grimace, bile inching up his throat. 

“ _Ew,_ you got wolf eye ball all on you, that's super gross." He can hear Jester gag and he assumes the rest of the fight went well, because there's no more sounds of a struggle and the others are making their way over. 

Caleb is standing again, holding the bite wound on the junction of his neck and looking far paler than usual, one hand still held out towards where the wolf had been. He lists to the side and Molly moves to catch him, ignoring the way the man startles and tenses underneath his fingers. 

“Jester,” he pleads, trying to keep Caleb from completely collapsing. 

“Okay, okay, okay,” She grabs the wizard's other arm, slinging it over her shoulders and helping to hold him up on his other side. There's a brief flash of green light from the arcane symbol at her waist and beneath her hand. Molly breathes a little easier when the blood pulsing from the bite wound finally stops. 

“How the fuck did they get so close without us noticing?” Beau steps up, blood splattered across her fists. 

“We definitely need that alarm spell back…” Nott wrings her hands, glancing up to where Caleb is held up between Jester and him. 

“Caleb?” Molly ventures, but it's useless.The wizard is conked out on his shoulder, listing bonelessly against him and Jester's grip. 

“Where's Ophelia?” Fjord asks, looking around at the carnage.

“ _She_ is right here,” the tiefling seems to melt from the dark, there's two figures behind her and Molly assumes they are the drivers and glorified assistants. 

“Quite the scare was it not?” Her smile is sharp and ever knowingly amused. 

Molly wants to sneer and say she was never in any true danger in the safety of her carriage, but he's busy trying to help keep Caleb upright. 

“I trust this won't happen again?” She eyes each of them, her gaze lingering on him and Molly narrows his eyes. 

“Yeah, let me just fucking ask the monsters and beasts to chill the fuck down real quick,” Beau grumbles, arms crossed. 

Ophelia laughs. “You're an amusing one, _little girl_.”

Molly can hear Beau's teeth grinding at that. 

“Here's to a hopefully uneventful rest of the night.” She turns, raising a dismissive hand over her shoulder and sauntering back to her carriage and Molly can't help but curl his lip up at her exit.

Maybe Beau was right, she is kind of a bitch. 

“Is he okay?” 

Molly looks over to Yasha, her brow creased and eyes worried. 

“I think so.” 

With Jester's help, Molly hobbles over to one of the abandoned beds that isn't currently splattered in viscera, lays Caleb down while the others work to move the bodies away or burn the corpses they can. Jester sits down beside him, looking over the wizard as well. 

“At least he's sleeping.”

Molly laughs, because he knows the wizard hasn't slept more than a few licks the past few nights if not ever since they got him out. 

“I'm worried about him..." She continues, running her thumb over her symbol to the Traveler, her voice quiet and solemn. 

“I am too...” he admits as well.

He wants to ask her to tell him everything, to tell him every ounce of hurt that was inflicted on Caleb so he can know how to fix this, make it better, something-- no matter how foolish and impossible that is for him to do anyways-- but he says nothing. 

Because he doesn't think the other man would want him to know any of that and for all his brashness Molly respects keeping things close to one's chest. If it becomes more of an issue and Caleb endangers another member of the party or _severely_ endangers himself because of it, _then_ he will pry.

But only then. 

“Oh! I have something for you, I think that the others forgot about it, but I didn't." Jester reaches into the haversack, rummaging around for a moment before pulling out a familiar heart-shaped pendant. 

Molly’s brows raise at the sight of it. 

He had completely overlooked its absence until now, the constant thrum of energy across his sternum distracting him from the absence of the artifact. She passes it over and he accepts it, but he doesn't put it on. 

He knows someone who needs it more. 

He'll talk to Caleb once he's awake. 

 

 

 

 

\-------------------------//--------------------------

 

 

 

 

He wakes up from a dreamless and long sleep for once and its bright blue and white above him. His head pounds and he's not quite sure how he got here.There's the flash of snarling teeth and golden eyes and… oh, right. 

Wolves. 

He leverages himself up, blinking blearily and trying to get his bearings as the world tilts and slides around him.There's shapes moving around, colorful and bright, and he squints at them until they coalesce into people. One of them gets closer, prismatics and lavender and he blinks owlishly up at Mollymauk. 

“You gave us quite the scare yesterday.” 

Caleb frowns, brow scrunching. He doesn't remember doing anything that could have alarmed them yesterday….

__

_There's the rumble of snarls in the air, predators circling in the dark and swarming them and his head is pounding, something slick on his temple and the taste of iron stuck in the back of his throat._

_There's an arm hooked under his armpit and he's being dragged away from snapping jaws and prowling paws, spots of black among them that burst with dangerous color. His head hurts-- and it's hard to think past a certain point. He thinks he hears screams, but he can't tell if they are real and there's still a hand on him and he wants it off._

_He wrenches out of the grip when it goes slack, stumbling to his feet, heading for the loudest of the cries, because there's a flash of green behind his eyes and he needs to keep those dots of soft yellow safe at whatever cost._

_Even if it kills him._

_Something slams into him, teeth latching into the junction between his neck and shoulder and he goes rigid beneath whatever it is._

_There's teeth in him and they're ripping and tearing. He smells blood and he knows that its all different and nothing like it ever was, but there's a whining ring in his head that keeps kicking up and looping the longer they stay embedded in his flesh. He wants them out-- gods, he wants them out... _please.__

_They leave and he stays still. He doesn't want them back, he doesn't want to entice them or invite them back for more._

_There's someone standing over him, trailed in an embroidered rainbow and maroon and he's trying not to look at the sharpened teeth and the gold eyes nearby or think about the bassy rumble echoing among the ripping, feral growls._

__

He remembers burning one of the wolves moments later, frustrated and angry, wanting to prove something to himself and to them. 

Prove that he doesn't need to be protected by them. 

~~That he issn't worth the effort anyways~~. 

“Look, I'll level with you Caleb,” Molly starts crouching so they are level with each other, “I'm worried.” 

Caleb doesn't focus on his eyes. 

He doesn't want to see everything swimming in there. He knows he'll find pity and he doesn't need more of it spit into him where it can eat at him like acid. 

“You were practically concussed, nearly brained and I thought you were unconscious, but you still ran headfirst back into that battle and you've never been that reckless before.” 

He wasn't being reckless. 

“You could have been killed..." Molly holds up a familiar necklace and Caleb stares at it. 

He wasn't deliberately trying to get killed. 

...He just didn't really care if it happened.

There had been so much grey that it smothered out the old flames of self preservation. 

“Just take it, don't argue with me on this Caleb.” 

_Take it_. 

He flinches, but it quickly morphs into a bristling climbing heat.

Molly doesn't have the right to order him around. 

None of them do. 

He doesn't want it--- he doesn't want the periapt, but Molly is trying to shove it onto him anyways and it is indescribable.

Something about it makes him want to smash it beneath his fists, throw it as far away as he can and push Molly back. Snarl in his face, bark out ‘no’ where it can't be denied or ignored or thrown away like every other time before. He wants to yell it until it tears apart his chest and its imprinted into every inch of his skin so no one can deny it ever again. 

“No,” he breathes out quietly instead, too scared to let that fire escape him. 

It's unbelievably satisfying to finally say it anyways, even if it's whispered and quiet. It's indescribable, the way it feels to have that insignificant little word leave his lips and he wants more of it.

He didn't know it could feel like this. 

He didn't know it could mean so much to finally just say it. 

Molly recoils, the necklace going with him. The tiefling is frowns and Caleb can see he's confused. That Molly's starting to get agitated, but he won't back down on this. 

“I just want to make sure you stay alive, I don't understand.”

“I do not want it, Molly.” 

“I'm just trying to help you." 

“I said _no_.” 

Molly grits his teeth. “It's just a necklace, Caleb.”

It's not.

It's not just a necklace.

It's a choice. 

And he had said _no_.

He had said he didn't want it and the tiefling isn't listening and he knows it's just an item, but it feels so much worse.

It feels like he's losing. 

It feels like he doesn't have control.

It feels like satin against his shoulder blades and the inability to refuse and he's _tired_.

He's tired of people telling him what to do, how to feel, how to heal.

He wants-- He wants _something_ back.

He thinks maybe it's power, the right to refuse, maybe even basic human autonomy.

~~Control.~~

Whatever it is, it makes him want to fight back and hit and scream in the face of Molly’s demand because he doesn't _want it_.

The tiefling floundes and Caleb can see him trying to work through it, trying to figure out why he's so vehement about refusing. “I-- I don't know what to do, I don't know why you won't let---,” Molly huffs out a breath, lavender fingers tangling around the metal chain. “Just-- Just tell me how I can help you, Caleb.” 

He can't and he won't and he doesn't know how because there isn't anything to help or fix.

He's _fine_. 

He just wants to be himself again and none of them have even give him the choice or the chance and he's tired of it.

He's tired of all of it and he's angry and frustrated and _he had said no._

_He said no and Molly didn't listen._

~~No one ever listens.~~

And he knows exactly what to say to take the fight out of the tiefling.

Knows it so vividly and starkly that the second it sticks in his head its dripping from his lips. With as much venom as he can conjure from that angry tangled viper under his ribs, and he doesn't even stop to think about the consequences.

He doesn't stop to consider the repercussions because he doesn't care.

He just wants Molly to _hurt_.

 

“You should have stayed in the ground.” 

 

The tiefling reels back at that, eyes wide and there's shock written all across his face and Caleb can't help but feel vindictive about it. 

The small needle of regret settles in when Molly stands up and stumbles back a step, like Caleb's pulled the ground out from beneath him and his legs have gone all wrong. The necklace clutched to that silver-marred sternum and the tiefling stares at him, through him, and Caleb can almost see the words sticking in his head, see where they slide against that surety and self confidence and eat at it like acid. 

He doesn't stop Molly when he leaves. 

 

 

 

\----------------------------------//--------------------------

 

 

 

 

The growling roll of distant thunder has Molly shooting up from his bed roll. 

The night sky is blotted out by heavy clouds, swollen and grey that have swallowed up the moons and he can't even find the barest sliver of silver among them. A forking, tongue of light snaps into the earth miles away, the answering crack echoes in the space and vibrates beneath his ribs. He looks around, the others are still sleeping but he can see some of them starting to rise with the continued rumbles and bursts of light. 

He squints out at them, there's an anxious coil in his chest and he can't remember why until he sees Yasha’s bed roll is empty. A chill as cold as the rain that begins to softly patter the ground creeps into his gut. 

The others are jumping up, gathering their things and ushering any stragglers and late risers towards the cart. Jester grabs his wrist, starting to pull him up as the wind begins to climb, but he slips out of her grip, pulls on his coat and heads off to where he can see footprints sliding into muck in the dirt. Away from Caleb and the continuing loop of his voice in his ear spitting the same phrase over and over. 

“Molly, where are you going?!” Jester calls over the rising storm.

“Yasha’s missing!" is all he shouts back as he takes off into the rumbling dark. 

He has to move fast, the boot prints are being swallowed up by the beginnings of the downpour and the repeated flashes of light keep causing him to have to blink away the dendritic patterns behind his eyelids. 

He passes a small tree that's been split, like lightning, cleaved it in two with a burst of sparks and cinder, but the tree has no burns curled around it. It's just splinters and hacking marks from some kind of blade and his brow furrows. He leans around it, following the melting footsteps with his eyes and there's another. This one didn't fall though, there's just a gaping bite out of the side of it from whatever tore into it. 

That nervous tension in his gut winds tighter. 

He follows the winding trail of obliterated trunks, shards of the ruin lodged in the muck and the footsteps are almost untraceable now, but the maelstrom of whatever tore through here is. 

Finally, he hears the sound of metal thunking into wood over the swell of the rain and then she's there. With a glimmer of biting steel slick with precipitation as it arcs through the droplets, almost suspended in time for a breath before it swings into the side of a skinny trunk. It crunches through, devouring the wood, and the thin thing creaks, groans and teeters until it crashes into the earth with the satisfying pop of bough and limb. 

There's a flash of light behind the figure and he can see skeletal wings arcing from her back as she roars beneath the brontide and slams the sword into another, taking it's life with little effort. The tree slams into another and stays upright and she snarls at it, face scrunched, running with rivulets of dripping water that reflect dangerously in the storm. 

She looks for all the world like an angel of death when the lighting cracks again and crowns her in a jagged halo of light. 

She hasn't noticed him yet and he watches her, surprised that she's still here. Mismatched eyes shoot to him after another clap of lightning, almost preternatural in their awareness as she pinpoints him in the dark. She raises the blade, startled, before recognizing his waterlogged coat. 

He steps forward.

“You didn't leave?” he asks in an awed breath.

“No...” She looks towards another flash of lightning, face solemn and drawn.

“Why not?” 

“I can't,” she sighs and her shoulders hike up. 

“Why?” 

“I have to stay here." Her hand loosens around the hilt of the blade and and it's the most vulnerable he's seen her be in awhile. “I have to protect them.”

“From what?” 

“Everything,” she breathes it out like it's all the answer he needs, but he doesn't understand. 

“But you can't protect us from everything, Yash--” 

“I can try. I can do better than I did before. I have to.” 

Molly doesn't miss the clenched fist or determined grind of her teeth. 

What he doesn't get is what she's so vehement about protecting them for. 

“What are you talking about?”

“I--" she whispers, like she's afraid to admit it, “I failed them…”

“Yasha it wasn't your fault--” 

“It was. It is... It will _always_ be my fault and you can't change that." She looks right at him and there's a fierce conviction there. "No one can.” 

Molly wants to tell her it isn't, tell her she doesn't need to protect them, that she doesn't need to stick around if she has to go, but he knows there is nothing that will change her mind. 

And he wants to understand, he wants to know why she can't leave, wants to know what's keeping her here, what's put that fear in her eyes and the guilt heavy across her shoulders. 

He wants to know what happened to them….

“.... Yasha….”, he starts, slow and halting and letting the rain fill the pauses, “What happened back there… in that… _that_ place?” 

She avoids his eyes, fingers tightening around the hilt of the blade and lip curling. “Everything.” 

“What does that mea--?” He starts, but she cuts him off.

“They-- _He_ pulled us apart, burned us, branded us, flayed us, kept us chained up like animals and collared us like _dogs_. Pulled our teeth and our nails and everything in between-- and he... he didn't care if we screamed or begged or cried for it to stop. He didn't care...” 

Molly takes a step back, images of the things he saw in that dungeon haunting him, the blood-stained tools and the table and the brands still visible on some of them. 

“And he-- we were--” She almost has to force the words out and Molly almost wants to tell her to stop because he didn't think knowing would hurt as much as not knowing. “We were dying in there...we hadn't-- they didn't bring water for days and… and…” 

She's closing off, shrinking away from him now and she's never done that before. “I didn't-- I knew it was a possibility. I saw the way he watched me. I saw it and I didn't--” 

“...Yasha?” He asks because he's afraid of that look in her eyes and the way she's watching him likes she's desperate for him to understand something. He's afraid of the way she's talking and the words she's saying and it all hurts more than he could have imagined.

“I didn't want to, Molly. I _didn't_ … but I didn't have a choice,” 

Oh, gods. 

Oh, please, _no._

There's a dreadful pitfall opening up in Molly's gut and he's trying not to fall into it because--- because ... he hadn't fathomed this. 

He hadn't conjured this in his head because who the fuck does, who the fuck thinks about that happening to their friends and he wants to kill Lorenzo all over again. But he can't, and it's all tangled up under his sternum and he can't get rid of this feeling. Its poisonous and caustic and guilty and---

_‘You should have stayed in the ground.’_

Maybe he should have.

“And...And then… when it was over he made me choose. He made me choose and I didn't want to, because...because I knew neither of the two he picked would come out the same and I just--” Yasha huffs out a breath, lips lifted in a silent snarl and Molly can't imagine it. 

Doesn't want to imagine it, doesn't want to think about it-- but it's all that's tangling in his head and he's never regretted something more in his entire life than dying at that roadside and abandoning them. 

He's never felt this guilty before. 

He can't stop seeing Yasha trapped beneath someone and crying and desperate-- and he doesn't want that image in his head, he never wanted to know this and he can't take it all back, can't save her from it, but gods-- _gods_ does he want to. 

“I couldn't let her go through that. I couldn't… and I think I-- I think I killed him, Molly…”

He's confused, his thoughts are snapping and frantic and he's trying not to show that he's trembling and shaking-- scared because he can't fix this, there's nothing he can do here and he's powerless against this.

“Who?” He whispers, ribs rattling and mouth moving before he can tell it what to do. 

“Caleb.” 

He has ideas, there's things in his head and they're right there, but the threads are loose and severed and he _refuses_ to connect them because it's not concrete yet and he's terrified of what it could all mean. He doesn't want to tug on that thread so he clings onto that familiar confusion he's grown used to these past few days and let's his lips move against his will.

“He's still alive, Yasha.”

“That doesn't mean he's _living_ though." She frowns and there's that guilt again and he thinks he understands why it's there now but he doesn't want to name it, doesn't want to know about it anymore. 

“I don't… I don't understand,” And the storm nearly muffles him now even though they are feet apart, the wind a constant roar in his ears. 

“There are other ways to die besides dying.” 

He frowns. “Then _explain_ it to me so I can help you.” 

He doesn't want her to feel guilty anymore, he doesn't want her to shoulder any burden anymore because she already did everything for the others. 

“I can't,” she forces out and he can tell she really can't but it only frustrates him more because he just wants to help. 

He feels petulant and churlish and selfish but he wants to know why she can't. Why she won't let him help her through this. 

“Why not?”

“I just _can't_.” 

He's quaking, the rain starting to pick up even more and the wind tugs at his coat, the rumbles of thunder and cracks of lightning are consuming. The storm and the weight of everything makes him feel small, infinitesimal in compassion. “How am I supposed to help any of you then?” 

“It doesn't work like that, Molly!" She whirls on him, a dangerous light snapping in her eyes and it matches the storm raging over head. 

He recoils, taking a step back from it, blinking against the crash of it against his nerves and the after image of forking plasma behind his eye lids. It's thunderous and alarming and he retreats instinctively, like it struck him.

And it's the first time she's truly raised her voice at him since he came back, since he can fathomably remember and she's shaking, fists clenched and he's never seen her look like that before. 

He takes another halting step back. 

“Molly?”

Another careful step, boot slipping in the mud and he stumbles. 

“Molly, wait, I didn't…”

He's never felt the fact that he's only lived two years of life than he does right now. Yasha is looking at him like he's _just a child_. Like he can't possibly understand because he's just young and dumb, full of himself and there's a sadness there too, but he wants her to stop looking at him like _that._

“No, it's fine. You made yourself clear,” he bites out, because anger is far easier to work through than absolute devastation. 

She freezes, pausing where she's reached out for him and all he can see are deadened blue eyes and hear venom in his ears. 

_‘You should have stayed in the ground.’_

“I'm just the naive one,” and its tumbling out and he cant stop it even though he can see Yasha flinch at each word he hisses, “I'm just the one that died and came back and the one chased by miracles he doesn't even want, surrounded by friends who don't even want him either.” 

She doesn’t stop him, she's just staring at him, her jaw gone a little slack, like she never expected those things to come spilling out of him.

He plows on anyways, shoulders hunched and the rain spilling across his face, hiding everything beneath it. He feels like he's coming apart at the seams, because he can't keep all this shit inside himself anymore and the others aren't here to see this and he needs to get it out. 

_‘You should have stayed in the ground._ ’

“I'm just the stupid guy with a funny coat, right?” He tilts his head, chuckling, but there's no humor there. “ I'm supposed to just sit around and watch you all suffer because, hey, what the _fuck_ do I know, huh?” He laughs louder this time and it curls out of his chest, acidic and biting and the rain is tugging at him, nearly pelting him now, but he doesn't care. 

“Molly that's not--” 

“No, don't _lie_ to me,” he cuts her off, lip curling, “Not about this. I see the way you all look at me." 

“What are you talking about?”

 

‘ _You should have stayed in the ground_.’

 

He doesn't even know anymore. 

There's just this pent up ball of frustration that's been building in him since he came back and he needs to get it out. 

He's not stupid and he's not naive.

‘ _You should have stayed in the ground.’_

He hadn't missed the looks they give each other when he oversteps his boundaries, places a hand on a shoulder, grabs a wrist, ruffles someone's hair when he shouldn't, but sometimes he forgets and he's never had to be careful about touching and showing affection before. And he's trying, _he really is,_ but he can tell it's not hard enough sometimes. 

He can feel them watching him, ready to step in, in case he does something he shouldn't and it makes him feel miniscule, like he's a burden to them and not their friend. 

“You all look at me like-- like I'm gonna mess up. Like I'll do something I shouldn't by accident. Like I'm just the team fuck up.” 

“No we don't.” 

He shakes his head, eyes clenched shut against the flashes of lightning arcing overhead and the answering crashes rolling around them with each hissed sentence in his head. 

‘ _You should have stayed in the ground.’_

‘You should have stayed in the ground’ 

**‘You should have stayed in the ground.’**

“ _Don't lie to me!_ ” He shouts it out over the crescendoing storm, and he's tired of being talked around, of being given dodgy answers, and half truths, and of not being able to fight this monster in their heads. 

He's tired of all of it and he knows it's selfish, knows he's not the one that got tortured down in that cell or forced to make deals he can't even fathom. But he just wants everything to go back to the way it was and it can't. It just can't, and he doesn't know how to process that.

He's never experienced anything like this before and he doesn't--

It feels like he's lost something and he can't figure out what. 

_It feels like grief._

“I'm not lying..." and her voice is soft, soothing, fitting into the rumbling lull of the rain.

It sounds sincere, but he doesn't want to trust it. 

“It's okay, Molly.” 

He shakes his head because it's not. 

None of it is and none of it can be because they were all stolen from him and given back differently and it's not really fair. 

“Its okay to feel frustrated and scared. It's okay to hurt for us.” 

He shakes his head because he doesn't want to feel this anymore. He wants to bury it with the rest of his past and drown it in imbibements and people and color where it can't hurt him.

“But I'm not--,” he finally says, backing up again and fisting his fingers into his coat, “I'm not the one that got fucking _tortured_.” 

He's snarling, and he wants to swing at something but there's nothing and Lorenzo’s dead but Molly wishes he could watch him burn to ashes again. ”I'm not the one who was enslaved.”

He looks up at Yasha and there's red and he hates himself for feeling like this, for being angry when he has no right to be. “I'm not the one who was forced to sleep with that piece of shit in order to survive!”

Yasha flinches at that and Molly wants to take it all back, but her face softens and it almost looks like understanding. 

“That doesn't mean it still doesn't hurt...” 

And god it does and he's never felt like this before in his life. He wants to tear it out of himself because it's heavy and twisted and it chokes him up in all the wrong ways. 

“I don't--” “This isn't--” “I'm not---” and he's breathing too fast and he can't catch it, his heart skittering and sliding around in his chest. 

“It's okay…” 

And there's arms around him and he's smothered into the warmth of her, and he shatters against her, because he knows she can pick him back up.

It's selfish but he holds onto her with everything he has. 

Even when she falls onto her knees in the mud and the dirt with him, holding him tight like she's afraid he might run away like he feared she had moments ago. 

It should be her being held together by him.

He's supposed to be strong for _her_ , for all of them, but he's falling apart and all that frustration and fear, and the scared parts of him tumble out and he can't stop them now that they're loose. 

“It's okay, Molly... We're okay.” 

There's the distant rumble of thunder and it curls into his chest. 

“We'll be okay.” 

It sounds like a promise... but he's afraid it's not true.

 

 

 

\-------------------------//-------------------------------

 

 

 

 

 

Caleb can't stop thinking about what he said. 

It's taken up residence with everything else haunting him, and he can't help but remember the flash of hurt on Molly's face. He had promised himself he would never hurt any of them and yet he had done just that. 

He doesn't know how to fix it either. 

There's a storm that night and he can't but help be anxious when he notices Yasha is missing or when Molly takes off into the woods. The tiefling won't even look at him and Caleb didn't think he would miss even the pitying looks from the other. 

It's some time before the two return, soaked from head to toe and there's something different about Yasha.She's a bit lighter, like there's a weight off of her shoulders and Molly glances at him, and while he looks away just as quickly it's still something. 

It means he hasn't completely shattered whatever tenuous friendship was between them. And for all the parts of Caleb that wants to push them all away so they can't pick apart his weaknesses, he also doesn't want to be left alone either. 

He thinks the things in his head might finally devour him if he's alone. 

The rain finally breaks and the dawn breaks with it. 

There's a fine mist over the grass and a hush in the air. It's quiet and more peaceful feeling than it's been in a long time and he toes off his boots to stand barefoot in the dew slicked soil, staring out at the creeping fog blanketing the field before it breaks into the tree line. The others are packing things up, some talking with Ophelia and he idly listens to them, more enraptured by the refraction of early light through the dissipating mist and the beginnings of bird calls around him. 

He can't explain it, but there's always something soothing about the nature of things after a thunderstorm. 

There's footsteps behind him, he can't place them in his head, but he knows it's Yasha when she stands at his peripheral, looking out at the scene beside him, her arms crossed. 

She says nothing and there's a few minutes where the only sound is the chatter of song birds. 

“Have you ever done something you can't take back?” He asks, quiet and subdued.

Yasha flinches at that, shifting her weight. “Yes.”

“How did you fix it?” 

He can see her lips purse and gaze falling out of the corner of his eyes. “I haven't yet.” 

“What would you do to fix it if you tried?” 

“I'd--,” She pauses, brow furrowing. “I'd apologize.”

“Is it really that simple?” 

Yasha chuckles, but it's quiet and cynical. “No.” 

Caleb still doesn't turn to look at her. 

He's wary of what he'll find in her eyes. Instead he turns his eyes down to his bare feet and the soil and swathes of glistening green. 

“Did you do something you regret?” Yasha finally asks. 

“I… I think I said something to Molly that I can't take back.” 

“...we all make mistakes, Caleb,” there's something in the creased lines of her brow that speaks of a turmoil in her despite her words, but Caleb doesn't poke at it. 

“But this… I--” 

“We all say things we don't mean to.” 

But that's the thing.

He wouldn't have said it unless some twisted poisonous part of him meant it.

Some part of him so tainted and corrupted by whatever lurks in his memories that it's curdled into venom and spurred him on to use it against the people just trying to help him.

“I don't know how to fix this though.” 

“Start by apologizing,” She affirms, face softened by the beginnings of morning. 

He nods. 

There's the trill of a mockingbird and Caleb can pick it out from the others because, even for how uncanny its mimicry might be, it always sounds a little off. 

Almost like it doesn't fit in with the perfect weave of bird song around it. 

 

 

\-----------------

 

 

Molly is very good at avoiding him. 

They are encroaching on Zadash now, their arrival imminent in a day or so's time and among the constant sleepless hours at night there is the guilt. Any time he tries to get the tiefling alone to cobble together his apology the other is latching himself onto one of the others and Caleb loses the nerve to approach him. 

He contemplates going back to Yasha and asking her to help him, but he's already burdened her enough and he's still carefully dodging the unspoken subject between them that neither of them want to talk about. 

None of the others have approached him about the absence of Frumpkin yet either and he knows Jester was all too eager to mend the page back into his spellbook. That whenever she looks at him she expects to see the cat back on his shoulders, but he just… _can't._

He's elated by the idea of having the familiar back, relieved even, but he doesn't-- There's _something_ there that tells him he doesn't deserve the fey creature's companionship, that he doesn't deserve to use his friends helpfully provided materials for the ritual, and he can't get that idea out of his head.

Every night, when insomnia has him trapped in its throes and he's terrified of the things that await him in his subconscious, he reaches for the book. Carefully lays out the incense and the charcoal and all the components he needs, but he can't get the words to leave his lips. He's spent more time hunched over the book in his lap, staring blankly at the words across it than he has casting and he's afraid one of them might notice soon... because even he can't explain it. 

The one thing he really wants back is his silver spool of thread, because at least that serves a purpose. 

That means protection and control of his surroundings and he wants every ounce of it, but that had been the most noticeable absentee of his missing spell components.

He will just have to wait until Zadash to get a new one.

He'll have to continue to deal with the yawning anxiety of the open endless space around him until then and keep both eyes open at all costs. Even if exhaustion constantly tugs at his limbs and weighs down his eyes.

The only good thing about the constant exhaustion is the numbing effect it has.

It's similar to the hunger from before, the constant ache that's gone now that he has to pretend like he wants to eat the portions of food they give him every day just so they won't ask too many questions.

Honestly, whatever gets him to think about it less he welcomes with open arms. 

Even if it means tearing at his knuckles or idly scratching at his wrists until they bleed. And those he keeps under careful wraps because he knows that the others wouldn't let that habit continue and he needs that sliver of control over the things in his head. 

He needs every ounce of control he can get. 

Every. single. ounce.

 

 

 

\---------

 

 

 

 

It's a quiet night. 

They are a less than a day's travel away from Zadash now, hunkering down for the night when Molly approaches him instead of the other way around. Caleb freezes where he's pressed his back to one of the lone trees he could find, leaning against it and watching the moons like he usually does. 

“Hey…” 

Caleb looks over at him and he's surprised by the guilt on the other's face. 

“I… talked with Yasha about what happened with the periapt and I didn't…” 

The tiefling is talking softly and slowly and its nothing like Caleb is used to. 

It's odd. 

“I didn't---,” Molly huffs, fiddling with the pommel of Summer's Dance and it's so uncharacteristically not Molly it's throwing Caleb for a loop, “I didn't realize that what I was doing wasn't right and I just wanted to say sorry for doing that to you.” 

The tiefling lives unapologetically and boldly and he doesn't seem like someone who reflects on his actions because he isn't someone who aims to do bad things to other people in the first place. 

Molly always tries to help, even if he fucks up while doing it, and Caleb can't say the same for himself.

He had wanted to hurt the other's feelings.

Everything about Caleb's actions and been malicious and barbed and meant to drive the other away. 

And he still remembers that hurt written across his face when he said what he said too. 

“You were just doing what was logical.” 

Molly frowns, “That doesn't make it okay, Caleb.” 

He doesn't understand.. because doesn't it? 

Doesn't the end always justify the means? 

There was a purpose behind Molly's intent and it made logical and perfect sense so why should Molly apologize for them even if he reacted badly to them? 

It's not Molly's fault that he can't even accept a necklace that could keep him alive. 

Caleb sighs, curling his knees to his chest and resting his arms on them, chin resting atop the folded limbs. He supposes he's meant to apologize now, but he doesn't really know how to word it.

How do you apologize for telling someone you wished they were still dead? 

Molly settles down next to him, keeping a good foot or so of space between them, but the presence of the other is unmistakable and he can feel eyes on him but he doesn't look over to meet them.

“When was the last time you got a full night's sleep of your own volition?”

Caleb worries at the bandages wrapped around his wrists, itching idly at them. “A while…” 

“How long is ‘a while’?” 

Caleb sighs again, because he doesn't really want to answer that. 

He hasn't gotten a full night of rest under his own power since even before he got out. 

“Are you scared of something?” 

He lets out a wry laugh. 

He's scared of lots of things now. Things he didn't even know could scare him. Like the color red or the smell of leather or the feeling of satin. And those thing that waits for him in his dreams and his memories that are no longer just fires and screams, but something far harder to reckon with. 

“No,” he lies, because Molly doesn't need to know what he's afraid of. 

He hears the other sigh and he knows Molly can tell he's lying. 

“I won't press you to tell me…,” The tiefling idly shuffles a familiar set of tarot cards. “But just so you know, it's okay to be scared of things. It means you're alive like the rest of us.” 

He hates it though. 

He hates being scared because it means he's not in control of himself. 

~~It means he's weak~~. 

The tiefling pauses, looking over at him and Caleb still can't meet his eyes. “But it's not okay to let that fear stop you from taking care of yourself, Caleb.” 

He says nothing in return, because he knows he's letting it slowly tear himself apart but he can't stop it now that it's started, he doesn't know how. 

“And you know, I don't really like sleeping that much anymore either.” 

Caleb startles at that, looking over at Molly finally, but the tiefling is focused on the spread of cards in front of his crossed legs. 

“Weird, right?” Molly chuckles, smile cynical, “Sometimes I feel like I won't wake up if I do.”

He flips one of them and Caleb can barely make out the image of an armored skeleton atop a horse. 

“It's stupid, I know, but there's something in that moment between dreams and unconsciousness that's just too familiar to me." Molly's eyes are locked on the revealed card, his other hand drifting towards his scarred sternum.

He didn't know that dying had had an impact on the tiefling in any way. 

Molly was either very good at hiding it or Caleb had just never noticed. 

He's not sure which one is more likely anymore. 

He still thinks about how he told Molly he should have stayed in that shallow dirt grave with the earth and the worms to rot. 

“Molly?” 

Caleb darts his gaze back to his own feet when surprised red eyes glance towards him. 

“Yes?” And Molly’s voice is almost hopeful, wistfully surprised, almost like he didn't expect Caleb to say anything in return at all. 

“I'm sorry…” 

He doesn't have to see the look on Molly's face to know the tiefling knows exactly what he is apologizing for. “Water under the bridge, Caleb. Don't worry about it.” 

It still feels like it's not just water under the bridge. 

He thinks it might have stuck under that bridge like sludge; thick and viscous and harmful.

But Molly will never admit it to him.

Just like how Caleb will never tell Molly all the things that make him afraid to rest his head at night.


	14. Crescendo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Major Warnings: 
> 
> -Flashbacks/Night Terrors of Rape/Non-Con  
> -Mentions of Self Harm  
> \- Brief Discussion of Forced Cannibalism
> 
> Also a [Lorenzo POV Oneshot](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16434128) is posted for people who wanted to understand more of his motivations for doing all of this and how things happened (starting from Ch 6 and up until he dies) through his eyes.

The city of Zadash is a bit quieter than Molly remembers it being. The semi-crowded streets of the festival days are now mostly barren and even the shops that had been open before are closed or emptied out as well. 

There's the faint whisper of war times in the air, of family members sent to the front, of forces moving closer and the front lines shifting. Molly listens to it all with one ear and worries with the other, because he isn't sure how this could affect them later on. He fears it may eventually catch up to them, but for now they have a plan. 

Rest and recover for a week or so, gather supplies, sleep somewhere with an actual bed for a bit, and then it's off to the coast and back out of the empire's borders and away from this war. 

They head for the Gentleman first, almost everyone in consensus with collecting the gold from that job and using it to immediately recuperate at the nearest bath house. And Molly is definitely looking forward to some warm water for once and to getting rid of that lingering smell of sweat and dirt that starts to cling to him after traveling for awhile. 

There are a few in the party who are less than enthused by the notion of getting clean. 

Yasha eyes him after he makes the suggestion and he can tell there's a desire to wash up there, but not a desire to be surrounded by the others, naked and for all intents and purposes vulnerable. Caleb offers no protest, but there's a derision in his eyes and Molly can't tell if it's with the idea or with himself. 

Either way those two aren't fully on board and he thinks maybe it's within reason they don't want to bathe within a public space so he says nothing as they continue on their way to the Evening Nip. 

A familiar dwarf is at the counter when they walk in, the man eyeing Fjord and smiling lazily like he had before when he called the half-orc ‘pretty'. Molly still isn't sure what exactly that had been about the first time and he's not even sure if it's worse than outright derision for the half-orc either as Fjord is still a bit uncomfortable under the attention. 

Ophelia walks in and the old dwarf immediately pales, scrambling to let them through. She just smiles, but it feels more like when a wolf bares its teeth or a dragon smiles down at the foolish things stealing from its hoard. 

They descend the steps and Molly trails after Caleb, Yasha at his side, and he can tell the wizard doesn't like the hustle and bustle of the bar below, but there's not much he can do to make the noise and the people go away for him. 

The Gentleman is finishing up a card game below, securing the round and grinning slyly as he collects his winnings. And Molly would be a liar if he didn't say the man is most definitely as confident as he is handsome. There is a suave, almost cat-like way, he holds himself and moves, like he knows this is his domain and that none can ever challenge him. He turns that shining smile to them and his eyes pause on Ophelia. Molly raises a brow, because he's honestly not sure if the look in his eyes is malicious or not, but it's definitely very intent. 

When they kiss he almost laughs. He really hadn't seen that coming. 

Beau elbows him and he shoots her a glare. 

“Guess you were wrong, huh?” She smirks. 

He rolls his eyes at her. “Shut up.” 

The monk crosses her arms, taps her foot and clears her throat when the passionate couple goes on for a bit too long. Molly's brows practically climb to his hairline when Ophelia draws away and there's a bead of blood at the corner of her lip. The Gentleman swipes at his own swollen and now punctured lip and Molly has the distinct feeling he doesn't call the shots when it comes to certain contexts, and that's very, _very_ interesting. 

“Now their payment, darling,” Ophelia all but purrs, smoothing down the fine material of the Gentleman's robe with a wandering hand. 

“This… _lovely_ group of folks has been through quite a lot and I'd like to see them repaid for their efforts. In _full_." She levels the blue-skinned man with a cocked brow and an air of daring, as if she wants him to question her and she'll show him what happens when he does. 

“Why of course, my dear. Of course.." The Gentleman laughs, waving a hand to the guards off to the side, beckoning them.

There's something strained to him now, that careful panther-like grace is skewed and Molly really can't tell if it's fear or attraction for the woman practically sitting in his lap.

Probably both. 

A chest is brought over, filled to the brim with coins and Molly can't help but gape at it. He can definitely pay off the rest of Gustav's debt with his share of that, finally repay the man for everything he did for him in at least some small way. 

“Your payment, in _full_ ,” The Gentleman has to force it out, the grey tiefling all but breathing down his neck. 

Jester bounces excitedly on her toes at the sight of the coin, tail whipping. “ Oh, we can definitely stay at the Pillow Trove again with all of that! And I can buy some new clothes and and, oh my gosh, more inks and you guys, look at all of that _money_!” 

Fjord sighs and Molly can tell the man is dreading the ensuing shopping spree, yet he can't help but smile at the half-orc's misfortune. 

“I don't even know what I'd use all of that for,” Caduceus mutters, leaning against his staff and eyeing the coins with a confused scrunch to his brow, like he's never seen so much in one place. 

Oh, sweet naive boy. The things you can do with money.

“I'm sure we can help you figure it out,” Molly grins, and Beau elbows him. 

“Ow, what the hell?” He hisses, rubbing his rib where he thinks she hit a little too hard. 

“Don't corrupt the firbolg.” 

“Promise I won't,” but he can't help the sly and knowing smirk on his face as he says it, or the crossed fingers behind his back.

He wonders if Caduceus has ever been to a smut shop before and he can't help but wonder how long it'll take this group to eventually bring him to one. 

Not long if Molly has a say in it.

Because he really wants to see that same embarrassed look he had seen when Ophelia and the Gentleman made their little display in front of them all. The slight flush of pink under the pale fur as he covered his eyes and the dusting of it on his downturned ears had been intriguing. 

Jester, having had enough of staring at the coins apparently, finally leaps for them and proceeds to go about shoving the entire chest into the haversack. He doesn't protest, he supposes they can just divy it up later anyways. 

For now he wants to get shit faced and go to a bathhouse drunk, because why the hell not?

They made it here. 

They made it back. 

And they're all alive. 

And after his talk with Yasha, that had admittedly turned into a bit of a meltdown, there is a weight off his chest and he feels a bit more included in the weave of things. He doesn't quite feel like that one off color thread among them anymore. 

This is _his_ endearingly stupid and weird family of friends, and they will all get better.They will overcome this like they've overcome everything else. 

He can't help it when his eyes drift to the quiet wizard beside him. The man itching at the bandages around his arms and eyes occasionally darting to the other patrons milling about. Tense and wary, the bruises under his eyes almost black. 

All of them will overcome this.

He'll make sure of it. 

 

 

 

\------------------------------//----------------------

 

 

 

The first thing Caleb does when they find rooms at the Pillow Trove is try to find sleep in the safe confines of a walled room, with a locked door, and with sunlight pouring in from the windows and illuminating every corner of it so that no shadows stand too tall. 

He doesn't even care about the others. 

They went off to a bathhouse after securing the rooms, but he can't clean himself yet, because he doesn't deserve that luxury. 

He just knows that this space is safe, it's predictable, it's enclosed. That there's less unknowns than that terribly, awfully endless space of the open road. 

It feels like he can at least control his surroundings here. 

He pulls the sheets off of one of the two beds, tearing the comforter down off of the mattress and piling them into the corner of the room where he can keep his back pressed to the wall and the beds between him and the door. He slots himself into that small alcove and keeps every inch of clothes on because he needs every layer between him and everything else. Even if they dig or pinch or constrict uncomfortably from where he's curled up. Even if he's already near to sweating, fully clothed and swaddled beneath his makeshift nest of blankets and down. 

It all doesn't matter because it's a barrier he will never shed. He pulls the blankets up over his ear and stares at the door. 

He closes his eyes and--

 

__

_There's dark, ambered eyes and softness and he remembers her as ebony hair and warmth and summer beneath him._

_It's dark and quiet here._

_There's only the steady thrum of their hearts between them and the low hush of blood thrumming in his ears. And Astrid is pliable and comforting beneath his hands, and there's hands on him as well and it's all naive devotion and a feverish desire to chase away the things they have to endure in the waking world._

_And here, where no one can find them, it is perfect and meaningful._

_It's everything he remembers it being._

_But she goes still under him and he's confused because he doesn't remember this._

_Doesn't remember the flickers of fire eating across her limbs or climbing up to wreath her skull and turn her into ash and dust beneath him._

_He falls forward into that pile of empty ruin on the sheets that are bleeding into dripping crimson around him. The still smoldering ashes sear along his front, but he's far too distracted by the weight crushing along his back and the fingers tangled in his hair and shoving him down into them._

_He feels like he's dying, like he's being split at the seams and he thinks he's crying out for help in this infinite black but there's no echo and no sound and he's drowning in the sea of red as it seeps into his lips and down his throat._

_“You're nothing.”_

_He's choking on it and he can't breathe and there's just an infinite pain snapping up his spine and its all white noise and blood and he can't-- he can't breathe--- he can't---he_

__

He startles awake with a strangled cry that he quickly muffles. 

He doesn't remember…

He can't remember him saying _that_ and he's scared because there's so many things he can't remember. That he doesn't want to remember, but he knows they happened because why else would he be forced to feel like this?

He curls into himself, drawing his knees to his chest. 

He wants to know… he needs to know because than he… he can… he can…

But he doesn't. 

He doesn't want it. He wants it out of him, and he wants all of it cut out and removed so he doesn't have to ever know. He doesn't want this. 

He never asked for this and he doesn't know why it can't just go away and leave him alone.

He just wants to bury it and leave it to die.

He just wants it to go back to normal. 

He just wants to sleep. He's so very tired… and he just wants to sleep… 

He just wants it all to stop and he doesn't know how to make it stop. 

~~You know how~~. 

He shakes his head.

_He can't._

And he's terrified of whatever that voice is, because he knows it doesn't belong there, but it's there anyways and it's crooning and alluring among the grey... but gods he _can't._

He has to live for his parents.

He has to fix his past. 

He can't take the easy way out of this.

He curls his fingers around the amulet hung around his neck. 

He can't and there's something alarming about the fact that he even thought about it. That the thought even decided to intrude and invade into this carefully built space he's made in the corner of his head where he thought it was safe and numb. 

~~It would be easier than this.~~

Gods, he knows it would be. 

He knows it would be so much easier and that's why he can't, because he doesn't deserve an easy way out. 

There's the flash of metal in the corner of his eye, illuminated by the dipping sun and the oranges from outside that bleed into red. It's a blade...and it shines like fire and temptation. 

He stares at it. 

He doesn't know who's it is.He doesn't even know if it's real. 

He doesn't care either. 

He stares at the short dagger and there's the faint impression of pain along his wrists, a phantom memory he's tried to lock away within the walls of an abandoned asylum.

~~Those people aren't here to stop you this time.~~

No. 

He won't do that again. 

He won't try that again. 

He was weak and he's not weak anymore and he can't do that again.

He won't do it again. 

He'll find another way.

He'll control this thing inside him… 

_Whatever the cost._

 

 

 

\--------------------//-------------

 

 

 

Molly is finally in clean clothes and clean skin and it feels good to relax for a a bit, still warm and pleasant from the bath and slipping into inebriated with their cheapest ale. 

He lounges in a chair in the belly of this fancy place and watching the patrons mill about, interested in the shapes and colors of these strangers. Keeping an eye out for any that might eye him a bit more than the normal confusion or initial shock at seeing a colorful tiefling. 

He wouldn't say no to a bit of company tonight but he doesn't really want to spend the money he's gotten from what they divvied up. He can't remember the exact amount Gustav owes and that's an important debt to repay so every coin could count now. 

He'll just have to find companionship the old fashioned way. 

He doesn't expect Nott to approach him while he's in the midst of his casual browsing though. She's not disguised and no one seems to pay her much mind for now at least. 

“Hey, Molly?” 

“Hmm?” He hums, an elbow propped on the back of his chair and head cocked. 

“Can I--” She shuffles, nervously thumbing at the bandages on her left hand. “Can I ask you something?”

“I'm all ears." Molly gestures to the chair across from him and kicks it out from under the table with the toe of his boot. 

Nott scrambles up into it but she doesn't talk right off the bat. Instead she takes a swig from her newly acquired flask and it seems to settle the jitter in her fingers. 

“How do you do it?”

Molly frowns, still lounging against the back of the chair, but his interest is heavily piqued now. She could be referring to a number of things and he can't help but run through the list in his head. 

“How do you get over missing a part of yourself?” 

Oh. That. 

“What are you referring to?”He tilts his head, eyeing her cautiously. 

He knows what she means.

He knows she means that big gaping void called his past. 

“You know what I mean.” 

His eyes flick down to her missing finger and he can't help but wonder if she was left handed or not. 

And he doesn't really miss his past.

It's not something he likes to think about a lot. He knows he's missing something sometimes though. 

When Jester talks about her mom and he can't remember a childhood or any parents tending to him or teaching him how to pick himself back up. He had the circus and he had Gustav, and that was the most role models he ever had. 

But they weren't exactly parents to him. 

There's something there, something special he's missed out on and if anything maybe he misses not having those unknown people to love and be loved by. 

But he still won't go seeking out his past.

That person is dead. 

Even if, as they left the Gentleman's bar, Ophelia had brushed by him and said words that still resonated with him. 

He will not pry for more until it becomes necessary. 

_'Careful. You wear a skin that brings dangerous things after it. I know Nonagon is dead, but you are not. Be wary.'_

It doesn't make much sense still, but he won't say no to being careful. He doesn't really want a repeat of dying anytime soon. 

 

“I think our situations are a bit different, Nott.” 

Nott worries at that spot where a finger should be, not meeting his eyes and sighing. “I know, but none of the others have anything like this and I thought you might know what it's like to not have a part of yourself better than any of them.” 

She's not wrong.

But he's also terrible at giving advice on things like this. 

He could just tell her to avoid it, to run from it, to tell it to fuck off, but what good will that do her? It's a physical thing. She can't just pretend it doesn't exist and that it doesn't affect her in some way. 

“Did you try to talk to Caleb?” 

Her face falls. 

“He won't even look at me.” 

“That's--”

“‘Odd’, yeah, I fucking know...trust me,” she huffs, taking another long drink from the flask, “He hasn't really talked to me ever since he--”

“Saw your hand in the cart?” Molly cuts her off, leaning forward now. 

She nods. “I'm just trying to understand why he won't even look at my--,” She waves the hand in question.“At it… at _me_.” 

She looks up at him and her ears are pressed back to the point he can barely see them and he's never seen her eyes so wide and searching before, like he might hold all the answers she needs. 

“Is something wrong with me? Am I… did I do something wrong, Molly?” 

He hasn't seen Nott look like this in awhile. Not since he got her off that table in that dungeon and she had looked lost and scared and unsure if he was real or not or if she was actually even free. 

“No, Nott there's nothing wrong with you, nor did you do anything wrong, why would you think that?”

“Because why else would he pretend likes he's sleeping when I try to talk to him? Why else would he startle every time he accidentally sees my face? Why else would he avoid me…?”

“Nott I don't think that's because of you though. I don't think Caleb is oka---”

“I'm not an idiot, Molly,” she hisses, “I know he's not okay.” 

Molly crosses his arms, settling back against the chair. He waits, because he can tell she has more to say. 

“He hasn't been okay since we got chained up. Since Lorenzo took him--” She pauses, fists clenching and lip curling. “ Took him upstairs and brought him back different… and I'm-- I'm scared because I can see him fading and he won't talk to me about it.” 

“I don't think it's something he'll ever talk about.”

“That's why I'm scared.” 

Molly tilts his head, confused and she looks at him, eyes heavy and knowing, full of a resigned dread. 

“He will let it tear him apart until there's _nothing_ left.” 

And he's terrified she isn't wrong.

 

 

 

\-----------------------------//-------------------

 

 

 

 

__

_There's two other figures to either side of him and he knows them._

_There's another, pacing slowly, back and forth in front of them, hands clasped behind his back, face stern and downturned with something like disappointment._

_“Casting is all about control.”_

_And he knows that voice. The one that croons lies that sound realer than the truth in his head as he watches a fire devour his past._

_“Control over your mind, your body, and your very being.”_

_He stops in front of him, eyes reflective and cold._

_An endless polished metal._

_“If you can control the things inside you, you can control the ways of the world." Ikithon snaps his fingers, fire leaping to them hungrily and burning from lively orange to a poisonous green. “You can even learn to control those around you as well.”_

_Those eyes flick up to him and there's something terrifyingly familiar in them._

_“Do you understand?”_

_Caleb nods because he does._

_He nods because he understands control._

_He nods because he understands power._

_~~He nods because he understands he's weak.~~ _

__

 

He darts up, skin slick with a cold sweat and head alarmingly fuzzy and for a moment he thinks those clouds are back. The ones that used to make it hard to think and be, but it's gone as soon as he sees the familiar scattered colors of the others in the room.

‘ _Learn to control your emotions._ ’

He sags forward. 

_’Learn to control your thoughts._ ’ 

He buries his face in his hands. 

_’Learn to control your body._ ’ 

He hunches further into himself. 

_’Do not let these things control you._ ’ 

He presses the heels of his palms against his eyes until there's bursts of color in the black and the voice stops.

He thinks it's ironic. 

That Ikithon indoctrinated such strict control over oneself when he never let them hold their own leash. 

He always had them collared.

Ignorant to their tether with the blinders and the distractions and the pretty things he promised and Caleb had listened because power was alluring, power was _everything._

He had wanted it so badly and he doesn't even remember why. 

He doesn't remember why because he can't remember ever wanting power more than he does now.

~~He needs it.~~

He will take it back from Lorenzo even if it ruins him. 

~~He will do anything for it~~.

 

 

 

-

\------------------------//-----------------------------

 

 

Molly notices that Yasha has a tendency to hang back after a few days of staying in Zadash. 

She'll linger in the room, stay behind, and he doesn't know how to coax her out sometimes. He asks Beau if she's okay and the monk brushes him off, says she's just tired and sleeping in, but Molly has a feeling it's not that, because the barbarian always looks tired when he does see her. He wonders if she has the same problem sleeping as Caleb. 

Today in particular, halfway through their stay here, he hasn't seen an inkling of her among the group. He spent most of the day with Jester and Fjord, Beau had even joined them after a while, but there was no Yasha in tow. 

It's waning into dusk, the sky darkening outside and Molly is worried now. She hasn't come down at all. Even Caleb had wandered down, not for long, but long enough that Molly wasn't exactly worried that he was just wasting away in the shared room.

He picks his way up to the other room that Yasha and the others are sharing.

“Yasha?” He asks, softly rapping his knuckle on the door and listening. 

There isn't exactly a beckon or a ‘come in’ from her, but there is a muffled affirmation so he pushes it open slowly. 

It's dark. 

There's a single low burning candle in the corner of the room. He doesn't exactly need all that much light to see by anyways and it's not hard to spot Yasha leaned up against the headboard, head tilted to stare out the window at the presence of heavy clouds blotting out the moons. 

“Hey,” he starts, unsure how to broach the subject and afraid to have her know he's worried, because she might think it's pity. 

She says nothing back, but her eyes move to him. And they're rife with something, ringed by bruises and blacks and she looks very, very tired. He doesn't ask if she's okay. That would be counterintuitive and that look on her faces makes him think she wouldn't appreciate that hollow sentiment right now. 

He sits on the edge of the bed, carefully perched so he can leave if she tells him to.

“Molly?” Her voice is soft, quiet and drifting in the dark. 

It sounds lost. 

“Yes?” 

“Have you ever...?” She huffs out a breath, shifting so her legs are crossed in front of her, “Have you ever been afraid of something?” 

“Of course.” 

He's been afraid before. Afraid of many things before. Usually in the moment they are happening and not as much before the fact, but he's felt fear. He's not arrogant to think he hasn't been afraid before. 

“What if it's something stupid?” 

“I mean, there's lots of stupid things to be afraid of.” 

Like those things that can't hurt you but still make you uneasy. Like thunder, or clowns, or the dark. They were irrational fears, but they were fears all the same. He never had any of those. 

No. 

Wait.

He thinks he has one now.

And it's that little blip of unconsciousness and nothing when he sleeps.

“Well...what if… what if I want to...be with someone, but I'm…" She worries at the palm of her hand with her thumb. “But I'm afraid of what that entails?” 

“What part of it scares you?” 

“Giving power to someone else.” 

“It doesn't have to be about power Yasha..." he explains softly, “you are equals with the other person. It shouldn't be about giving up your control unless it's something you both agree on. And even then they should still allow you control over what's allowed. It's not a take and take. It's a give and take.” 

“I know that. I really do, Molly,” She sighs, crossing her arms. “But some part of me thinks it won't be like that though... and I can't explain it.” 

He doesn't push her to explain it.

He can tell she doesn't want to explain it to him. That she doesn't know how. That's she has said as much as she's willing to about it and just enough to get it off her chest for now.

But he is worried about one thing.

Something he never really discussed with her because she was often closed off and aloof about it. 

“Yasha, that wasn't…?” 

“ _No_ ,” She says firmly, looking over at him. “I've been with-- That wasn't…” 

Molly sighs, kneading at his forehead with the heel of his palm, avoiding her eyes. He had been afraid the only experience she had was something terrible and twisted. Not that it would ever make her less of a person if it had been, but that her ideas of what intimacy meant would only be defined by what that piece of shit did to her. 

And no one should have that forced upon them.

He knows who she was talking about before too.

He hasn't missed the way her and Beau have grown closer as they have traveled. He wants to tell her that if anyone will have control in that bedroom it won't be Beau. He knows that one likes a particular type of women. He's seen the monk flush and stutter when met with a female who's got their shit together and is everything but willing to bend their knee to her. But he doesn't think that's what Yasha wants to hear right now and he'll let the two of them fall into that on their own eventually.

There's other questions he has anyways.

Things rattling around in his head after he confronted Yasha in the storm and she had told him things. Alarming things. Some especially alarming things when it came to a particular wizard.

“Hey, Yasha?” He looks over to her, sees the way she's watching him.

Partially guarded and eyes occasionally flickering to the growing storm outside. 

“You said you had to choose one of them for… that.” 

She says nothing, a muscles jumps in her cheek and he can hear the rough grind of her teeth.

“...why did you choose him?” 

She sighs and he wants to retract the question now that's he's said it, because she's curling her knees to her chest and staring at her feet. 

“He is strong,” she starts, voice low, “stronger than he knows. He's been through something before… I don't know what, but I know what it looks like when someone is haunted by something... And I thought--” She trails off, fists clenching and face falling. "I thought he could come out on the other side and maybe I could help him and he would be fine... But I…” 

He lets her work through the things in her head, waiting patiently and quietly. 

“I was selfish. I… there is no excuse, no right, no justification for what I condemned him to and…” She looks up at him again, eyes pleading, “I want to take it back. I want to go back and just say _me_ , tell him to ignore the other two…”

He goes to say something, to tell her it wasn't her fault, that she couldn't prevent anything, but she cuts him off. 

“It should have just been me, Molly.” 

“Yasha…,” he finally whispers because the way she had said that hurt.

Like she means every word of it. 

“Why couldn't it have just been me?” She looks to him, brow furrowed and eyes swimming with confusion. "Why did he have to hurt them too?” 

She falls quiet for some time and Molly has no answers for her because he doesn't understand why either.

He watches her face, softly contoured by the flickering candlelight and she's staring at nothing and into everything and he watches her face scrunch, arms folding around herself in an empty embrace. 

“... why did he have to choose me...?” Her voice is so quiet and so lost Molly almost doesn't hear it, and he has a feeling he wasn't supposed to. 

Because he's never heard her sound like that before. So small and unsure about everything around her.

Her voice doesn't rumble like distant stuttering thunder, it sounds fragile and tenuous, like fractured glass and he can feel it cracking in his chest. 

“And I can't stop…” She huffs out a frustrated breath and looks at her palms. 

“Can't stop what?” 

“I feel like he's always there. In my dreams...in-- in my head. I can hear him sometimes… the things he said… and I can.. I--” She bites off with clenched teeth and she's trembling, and he thinks it might be anger tremoring through her, but there's a desperation in her eyes.

 

“I can feel h-...hands on me that aren't there sometimes... and I don't know how to get rid of this..." She averts her eyes, hides whatever turmoil is in her at the admission. “I don't know why he won't go away. He's dead, but he's still there.” 

Molly never thought his chest could hurt this much. 

He never thought anything could feel like this.

It feels like his blood has turned to poison inside him and that's it's devoured everything in his chest because he can see that look on Yasha’s face. 

It's _killing_ him because he can't get rid of it. 

He can't take away the things in her head.

He can't fight this phantom with her. 

He wants to comfort her. Wants to embrace her and tell her she'll be okay but he's afraid because he doesn't even know what touch is unwelcome anymore and he doesn't want to hurt her.

The last thing he wants to do is add to those things stuck in her head. 

“Yasha, I'm not--”

He's not good at this.

Not at this careful game of advice. He doesn't know what the right thing to say is. Not with all of this laid out before him. He's never had to face this demon before. He's never been afraid of people or sex or anything like that and he doesn't know what to tell her to help her through this. 

“I know, Molly..." She smiles and its small and unsure but its there. “It's fine. You're good at listening. That's all I need you to be.” 

“I wish I knew what to say though. How to help you. How to help all of them." He sighs, moving so he's sitting on the bed fully now, facing her. 

She frowns, but it's not disappointed. Just a little sad. She squeezes his shoulder and it's reassuring and firm. "Just be there for them, Molly.” 

“But I feel like I'm losing some of them and I can't do anything to stop it.” 

She frowns, ducking her head. “You mean Caleb?” 

“Yes…”, he admits, “I just want to know what he's thinking sometimes. I want to know what he's so afraid of. I want to know what's chasing him in his head so I can stop it.” 

"It doesn't work like that..." Yasha grabs his hands, holds them in hers and they are firm and warm, real. "You have to wait until he says something first or he'll think he's cornered. He won't respond the way you want him to.” 

“He might never say anything to any of us though.”

“I know.”

“I don't like this.”

“I know…” 

“What are we supposed to do then?”

Yasha sighs, “Be there for him...for when he can't be there for himself. That's all we can do.” 

“What if we can't? What if…” He pauses, there's flashes of the wizard withdrawn and quiet and hunching away from them to slink off and be alone. “What if he won't let us?” 

“We will." She looks at him, eyes hard and determined. "We have to.” 

“What if it's too late?” 

“It's not.” 

She sounds confident, but Molly feels like it isn't true. He doesn't tell her though. 

He lets her cling onto that hope and he tries to cling onto it too but it's slipping through his fingers the more he thinks about it. 

 

 

 

\-----------------------//-----------------------

 

 

 

__

_He's kneeling in a pool of infinite black._

_The softest hint of candlelight starts to bleed in around the edges, enveloping the space. Finely laid hardwood flooring, a carpet decked in fine weaves and gold thread sits beneath his knees and he doesn't have to look up to know that tomes line the shelves. Their knowledge as infinite and vast as the numbers of them that tower in monoliths of intellect around him._

_He doesn't have to look up to know the figure in front of him, draped in white robes and gold trim and pale skin and a name he won't say out loud._

_“What did you do wrong this time, _sohn_?”_

_He's not his son._

_Never was._

_He never can be, never will be, not after what happened, what he did. It doesn't stop the words from falling from his lips though, a memory tying him loyally to the script._

_“I didn't pronounce the incantation correctly when I was doing the--”_

_“Wrong.”_

_It's not _his_ voice._

_It's something rumbling and predatory._

_And there's fingers under his chin, and they are not the ones he remembers. They are leathery and dry in all the ways but age. Wrought with the reek of blood and rot and he's seventeen again, but he's not there, it's not him-- not Ikithon, it's someone else._

_They tilt his head up and all he sees is gold and obsidian and crimson._

_The rough hewn of the carpet turns to smooth and clinging satin under his bare knees and he can't move-- because he's seventeen and this...never... happened._

_“You didn't listen.”_

_And there's fire crawling up that face, devouring the lips and leaving behind charred and blackened strips that pull back over shining teeth._

__“You can't kill me.”_ _

_He's swallowed up by the sea of red beneath him and he's falling and falling and---_

_He's in a white room, with a white bed, with white walls, with white clothes, with white teeth, with white skin, and white nails that he drags across his skin to bleed that liquid fire out onto the ground where it can't hurt him, can't hurt them._

_They grab his wrists, they keep it in, they trap those crimson splattering flames in his veins and he blinks---_

_There's hands on his wrists still and they are firm, but not harsh, and he looks up and there's a woman, her hair like fire and eyes like ice-- and he knows her._

_She knows him._

_She smiles._

_But there's disappointment there._

_Flames crawl up to devour it and she won't let go and he pulls at where he's trapped, but she won't let go, and he thinks he's screaming, but his throat is gone. There's just flames that cough out of him in whisking terrified embers---_

_“You. didn't. listen.”_

_Something brushes away the standing after image of the woman with one hand._

_It flashes blue and tanned and dipped crimson and pale jaundiced white against pale robes and gold trim._

_Her skeleton vanishes, burnt to charcoal and papery ash that scatters into the black surrounding him._

_“You. can't. kill. me.”_

_It's two voices at once now._

_Two familiar faces at once, and they're dripping into each other and leering over him, melting into his skin and he can't breath as they slip down his lungs and----_

__

 

He shoots up and he wants to scream. It's still dark out and it's only been an hour since he tried to go to sleep again. His eyes burn, his throat hurts, and his stomach feels like it's eating itself alive along with the thing in his skull. 

He just wants one full night of rest. Is that too much to ask? Was he being greedy by wanting just one restful night? Probably. But he wants it. Wants it more than anything right now. Wants it more than control. 

He wanders downstairs.

It's late, but not late enough that they aren't still serving drinks and he orders one. And another. And another. Keeps going until he can't remember what exactly he was afraid of to begin with. His skull stuffed to the brim with pleasant warmth and cotton. The nerves that usually skitter and crackle with a constant energy are dulled and fuzzy with imbibements.

And it's nice.

It's all disconnected, pleasant, and he leans heavily against the tabletop, resting on his elbows, eyes drifting shut. 

“Hey, bud," a voice says behind him, but he doesn't turn to face them just yet. "I’m cutting you off. Go get some sleep, we're closing down here for the night.” 

He didn't startle or flinch at the unexpected presence of them, and that's new. He doesn't look at them and see a threat-- no gold, no red, no teeth. He blearily eyes them, unsure what they want from him. 

“Where are your friends? Can they come get you?” 

A hand settles on his shoulder and it's warm, it's not trying to hurt him. And that voice is soft and feminine and oddly pleasant. 

“Hey? Are you okay?” They place the back of their hand on his forehead and he thinks he sees dark eyes and darker hair, but he's not sure. 

“Astrid?” 

The voice laughs, soft and chiming. “No, my name is Melda. Had one too many drinks, eh?”

They hoist him out of his seat and he leans against them. His legs all wrong beneath him, the world tilting and turning the more he focuses on it. 

“I don't get paid near enough to deal with this…” The voice grumbles, hoisting him towards the stairs and his breath hitches. Each new step up echoes in his ear, like the fall of a gavel-- of a glaive on stone, ringing in his ear. The further up they get, the closer to the top, to a door he can't see yet, the worse it gets, and his heart turns to trying to break its way out of his ribs. 

“Which room is yours?” Their voice startles him and he flinches away from it. 

“Hey, hey, bud, are you good? Please don't vomit,” they lament and he knows his face has to be pale now. It feels like the blood has drained from him and there's an unexplainable dread in him, originating from every point of contact he has with the other. 

He needs to get away. 

He pushes them off, stumbles away and back, lists to the side, slumping into the wall before he can right himself. Fingers barely brush his shoulder and he flinches from them, curling in on himself. Ignores that concerned voice and trudges down the hall-- he needs to get back, back to where it's safe and secure-- he should have never left. 

He trips through the threshold, shuts the door, and beelines for his pitiful little bed in the corner. When he's finally hidden beneath the blankets it's easier to not think. It's easier to settle into that warm feeling in his head. 

It's easier to forget and he falls into that black. 

 

 

 

 

\-----------------------

 

 

He's feeling a bit better. If that's even possible. After drinking away the things in his head he had been able to sleep through the night for once. 

He still could barely eat what was brought up for him from downstairs the next morning though, and he's still unwilling to eat with the rest of them downstairs. 

Nott had brought him a dish of bland and flavorless oatmeal that had been safe and non-descript, easy to work through at least. Barely nutritional or heavy, and he knows he needs protein, that he's practically a walking skeleton at this point, but he _can't_. He still can't stand the smell of meat or the sight of it. 

He eventually wanders downstairs. 

Head pounding, but it's a distracting pain, one that keeps the constant anxiety under wraps and beneath a murky fog of irritation. 

The others have decided to run their own errands, Beau staying behind with him when he says he wants to try and work through copying down one of the damaged spells in the book onto new parchment. 

He can't help but feel like a burden. It feels like they're babysitting him, treating him like a child who can't be on his own for too long. 

Beauregard is sat across from him at the table in the farthest, darkest corner he could find. He's trying to carefully replicate the arcane symbols when the monk sighs, pressing her forehead to the table and groaning. 

“Holy shit this is _so_ boring.” 

“You could join the others.” He can't help but let it come out a bit biting, because he knows she won't, knows it in the way she stiffens and straightens in her seat. 

“Naw, naw.. I'm good...just keep working on your spell shit.”

He sets back into his work, the mind numbingness of of it almost soothing as he goes. It makes everything else slip away for a bit and he falls into it, even if the light seeping into the tavern only exacerbates his headache. 

The constant drumming of fingers cuts into his concentration and he grits his teeth. 

“Beauregard.” 

“Huh?” 

“Stop.”

“Oh..." The drumming ceases and she draws her hand back, eyes a bit glazed, like she would rather be anywhere else than here. 

He can almost hear it as she eventually breaks down, and he would be lying if he didn't deliberately slow down his process. Going over a symbol two or three times, painstakingly ensuring that each one is perfect before moving on. He wants her to leave, he wants to prove that he can be alone for five fucking seconds-- that he's okay. 

She finally huffs out a breath, chair scraping as she stands up. “I'm gonna go check on Yasha, do you think you'll be good for a sec?” 

He nods jerkily, not looking up and he can see her hesitate out of the corner of his eye. She teeters for a moment, hand reaching for the chair before she shakes her head and turns towards the stairs. 

He's finally alone. 

There's only the dull thrum of the scattered patrons around him, the shift and creak of wood, and the flicker of candle light beside the occasional splash of sunlight from the windows cutting across the tavern floor. Raucous laughter and a voice that grates across him, rough and cracked, bled through with malice, decides to join the peacable ambience and Caleb grits his teeth against it. 

“-was fucking pathetic, I mean she cried the whole time!” 

“Oh, man you should have seen her face too.” 

He tries to ignore it. 

Tries to keep to himself in his quiet corner where he's just trying to get back to normal, but the conversation continues and he can't help but listen, because they say all of it in ways that turn his stomach and stuff his head with satin. 

He stares over at them, from across the tavern, jaw clenched and fingers clenched and shaking around the quill. The constant pounding in his head and the nettle of irritability laced under his skin from the decisions he made last night only exacerbate it all. 

He glares and doesn't even realize he's doing it until one of them locks eyes with him, elbowing the person next to him. 

“Oi, what the fuck you lookin’ at?” The ring leader calls over the din of the establishment.

They get up when he says nothing and Caleb squares his jaw further, setting down the quill. 

“I said, what the _fuck_ you lookin’ at?” The man barks again, weaving his way through the tables, his pack following close behind. 

Caleb still doesn't answer. Just levels him with the most unimpressed stare he can muster. 

“Are you stupid in the head or somethin’?” The man asks, still a good distance from his corner, but close enough that it's stoking that fire that crawls under his skin. 

“I'm looking at a piece of shit and his even shittier friends,” Caleb remarks finally, eyes narrowed and fingers curled tight around his quill. 

It goes silent, the bar patrons that are present around them fall into a hush.

“Say it again.”

_~~“Say it.”~~_

The man's voice echoes with a bassy rumble in his head, accompanied by a flash of gold teeth, and Caleb tries to keep the image in front of him straight, but it's melting into dark shadows and red flickering light. He stays frozen to the chair, unable to get up or back away from the approaching figure, that fire under his sternum snuffed out and smothered as quickly as it appeared, and he can't get it to come back. 

“What, now you've lost all your bark, aye?” They remark, close enough he can see the gap between their teeth.

Caleb tries to get it out, tries to push the words for the incantations out from where they've tangled in his chest and lodged in his head. But they wont come and he's stuck, floundering in the face of the hulking figures surrounding his little alcove now. 

The man smacks the shoulder of the friend next to him. "Look at ‘im! Can't even string a few words together, ‘s fuckin’ _pathetic_.” 

“ ~~Pathetic.~~ ”

Caleb flinches from the voice in his ear, no longer only seeing the human barking down at him beside his small posse, but something far worse. Fingers fist into the scruff of his coat and he's hoisted from his chair, a sharp yelp leaving him as he suddenly loses his stable perch. He kicks out against it, shin slamming into the table edge, the ink container spilling across it. He watches it start to devour the halfway transcripted spell and his hopes sink back into the black alongside the creeping stain. He should burn them, he should set them aflame, but he can't get his limbs to respond and he's trapped in his head. 

“Stop squirmin’ so much--” 

~~”Stop struggling.”~~

Someone grabs his flailing wrist and wrenches it behind his back before slamming him cheek first into the table, nose inches from the inching liquid midnight. With his arm trapped and twisted behind his back, the man holding it pushes it up until his shoulder starts to pop. The joint shifting dangerously and Caleb whines, writhes under his grip, tries to buck against it to no avail. The man presses up behind him where he's bent over the table, fingers twisting and tangling in his hair, and Caleb's heart tries its damndest to climb its way out of his ribs as the man leans over him and---

There's a crack of a fist across flesh, the oppressive heat behind him vanishing in an instant, and he gasps against the surface, trying to catch up with his breath. 

“Don't fucking touch him.” 

He peels himself off the surface, ink staining his left hand and dipped at the edges of his hair. The partially transcribed spell is ruined, the sheet bled an angry, veining black, the original page thankfully only marred by a few smudges, but it's hard to be relieved. Not when he can still feel lingering fingers caught in his hair and a weight behind him that isn't there. 

He hears the man huff out a strained and airy laugh that has him shifting his feet, wanting to put his back away from wherever he went. He turns to see that Beau has the man pinned up against the wall, his hand wrenched behind his back in a parody of Caleb's own seconds ago and her forearm braced against the back of his neck. She leans in, sliding the hand up higher and pressing down even harder, and Caleb doesn't stop her. His head muffled with grey. 

“Geez, lady, didn't want to play with your dumb, little bitch anyways.” The man laughs despite the circumstances.

Caleb stiffens at the slur and it snaps around in his head. The others laugh and jeer, and it grates against his skin and he wants to scrub them off where they all slide and settle. 

Beau only snarls, adjusting her hold on the man's wrist, snapping back one of his fingers in a quick movement Caleb nearly misses, her eyes dark and furious. Caleb still doesn't stop her. The man squirms beneath her forearm, yelling, and reaching back with his free hand to try and grab at her, but she dodges it, slamming her elbow down onto his shoulder and the arm falls limp. 

She pushes even harder, slides the caught wrist even higher, into an angle that can only be described as painful, until the shoulder pops dangerously and Caleb winces at the sound of it. The man's bares his teeth in a grimace, but there's the tightness of animal fear in his eyes that betrays him.

“Okay, okay, okay, I won't touch your fucking dense ass friend no more just--!” 

She cracks another and the man squeals. 

Beau grins; and its toothy and sharp, her nose wrinkled around a sneer. “You know I hate pieces of shit like you. You think you can pick on whoever you want cause you're the big dog. Well guess what? I don't tolerate unruly mutts who do whatever the fuck they want, so you better learn to fucking _heel_." She snaps another finger, growling out the last word. 

One of the man's friends lunges for her, but she cracks an elbow back into his face that has him stumbling and falling away. Caleb darts a glance to the others, all of them seemingly frozen with their pack leader pinned, other bar patrons having risen and encroached on the scene. The flush of heat along the back of his neck and between his shoulders only increases under their scrutiny.

“Now, if I let you go, are you gonna be a good little dog and leave?” Beau asks and Caleb snaps his attention back to her. 

The man nods, whimpering and Caleb thinks it's ironic how he was the one being called pathetic moments ago. She snaps another finger and the man yelps. 

“I see you around this city ever again and I'll break every last fucking one and more, you got it?” She hisses, low and promising.

“B--but I live here.” 

“Too bad and not my problem, asshole. Maybe you should think about where you put your hands next time, huh?”

The man blubbers, nodding, and she lets him free with a final shove into the wall. He whirls around, nostrils flaring, unshattered fist clenched, but Beau just cracks her knuckles and the man flinches back. 

His friends have already scampered off and Caleb watches the man slink past Beau and make a poor attempt to shoulder check her, but she dodges. He's not so lucky and he's shoved aside, barely catching himself on the chair he had been ripped out of. Caleb all but bares his teeth at the unruly man in a grimace that falters at the narrowed eyes, the sharp shine of a gold crown amongst the neglected teeth and cracked lips. 

“Fuckin’ bitch," the man mutters. 

Beau leaps forward at that, but the man has already beat his hasty retreat away and between the throngs of concerned onlookers. 

There's a pause, and then-- “What the hell are you all looking at? This isn't a show.”

The murmurs die off and the other patrons drift back to their seats. 

He doesn't sit back down until the last one has left, tense and wary, unsure if that one will make a move against him too. And he keeps hearing a different voice in his ear that he reaches up to scrub out, but it doesnt go away no matter how hard he presses the heel of his palm against it. 

“You okay?” 

He nods, dropping his hand. He feels numb and like he's not really connected to the situation, but otherwise fine. He really doesn't want her to tell the others about it. He doesn't want them to know he can't fight his own battles. That he wasn't strong enough to hit back or quick enough to dodge or smart enough to avoid the situation altogether.

He doesn't want them to know that he froze up in the face of danger because that would only concern them more. 

“Don't tell them...”

“Huh?” Her brow scrunches. 

“Don't--- I.." He shakes his head, the words caught. “I do not want them to… to…” 

“Oh, shit, no, yeah." She points between the two of them. “This stays between you and me and I won't say anything if you don't." He can tell its part guilt that drives her silence, but he's relieved all the same. 

“ _Danke_.” 

There's a pause and he picks at the edges of the ruined parchment, fingers dipped in shadows nervously running along the deckled edges. 

“Do you want to still work on the spell?” 

He shakes his head.

He really doesn't. Not right now. Not in here where he can feel the other patrons still looking at him, where he thinks one of them might rise up against him as well and he won't be able to stop them again. Not when he can feel phantom breath breathed across the shell of his ear, see the glint of sharp teeth in his peripherals that don't go away even when he pulls the scarf tighter around his throat. 

“...no.” 

Beau frowns. “We can go meet up with the others if you want? Yasha says she's gonna stay in for a bit so you can also go hang with her too.” 

He can tell she's ready to shove him off onto someone else. That she doesn't really know exactly how to maneuver around him right now and it stings a little, but it's also understandable. He doesn't know how to handle this either. 

“The others...” 

She scrambles up, dusting off her pants, grabbing up the staff leaned against the table top.

He hadn't even noticed it was left there. 

He doesn't know why he didn't try and grab it and defend himself, he doesn't know why he didn't just burn them or hold them in place, use the arcane things just at his fingertips.

He didn't even try and defend himself in that moment... He just let it happen. 

“Come on, I'm sure the others have managed to get into some kind of trouble by now so we should probably make sure their asses haven't been tossed in jail yet.” 

He drifts after her, adding nothing to the conversation as she continues to nervously chatter next to him.

It's easy for her to fill the silence and he lets her. 

He tries not to think about how he froze up.

How he didn't defend himself. 

How he just let it happen... 

 

 

 

\----------------------------//--------------------------------

 

 

 

Molly starts keeping a small list of things to remember in his pocket now. 

It's a simple thing. 

Containing each of their names and small bullet points beneath each one that he adds to each night the more he learns and adjusts to them. 

He wants to stop accidentally hurting them so he writes down their boundaries, creates his own little rule book to remind him what he can and can't do around each of them.

He puts a few things under Yasha’s name. 

She seems the most comfortable around him and he's not sure if it's becauseshe's known him longer or if she knows he would never hurt her. Either way, the most he has for her is that grabbing her by the wrists is a bad idea. He learned that one quickly when she had whirled on him with the beginnings of a snarl, realized it was just him after a moment and looked guilty about it. He also recorded that he shouldn't wake her up in the morning. That one had been all his fault and he still regrets it. Regrets being the one to put that scared wide-eyed look on her face when she realized she had a blade to his throat and there was a bead of crimson rolling down the hungry steel. He doesn't blame her for it. He should have known better. 

He doesn't mention the brand on Beau's shoulder after he suggested covering it up with a tattoo and she punched him in the arm before storming off. He only has a few things by her name as well. Mostly just don't poke at her too much and don't talk down to her. Both of which he's done before and he will probably accidentally do again, but he has it written down now at least, so maybe it will stick eventually. 

Jester is a bit more complicated. She's very good at hiding it all when she wants to. But he doesn't miss the way she flinches sometimes, when he forgets and drapes himself on her shoulders or when he idly grabs a strand of her hair to braid it or twirl on a finger and she recoils, but quickly recovers with a smile. She also doesn't like it when he grabs her wrists to get her attention or drag her towards something. And he can't help but feel guilty about it even if she brushes it off with smiles and warmth every time. 

He's stopped teasing Fjord about coughing up salt water too. Where the man was uncomfortable before, now he adopts a pinched look on his face and avoids his eyes. And there's not many physical triggers to avoid with him, but Molly tries to be careful with his words around the half-orc. He still teases him about sex though, because that seems like safe ground at least and because the half-orc still flusters like some blushing maiden. 

Caduceus is an easy one. His list is practically blank. There's not much that seems to phase the firbolg. And it's been interesting getting to know him over the past few days in Zadash. Caduceus is admittedly the easiest one of them to interact with now and it's almost ironic since he's the one he's known the least. The firbolg is infinitely patient and sometimes he feels like Caduceus can predict his actions before he does them, which makes it easier when the firbolg wants to avoid something Molly might do. He doesn't mind him touching his hair or patting him on the shoulder. Doesn't mind if Molly leans against him and laughs and he thinks they've started to get along rather comfortably. The only thing that seems to phase the firbolg is when a hand curls around his wrist, as with most of the others, but he learns to quickly stop doing that. The firbolg also don't like the flash of knives and daggers, but that's an easy one for Molly to avoid as well. 

Nott has two main things on hers. Don't stare at her left hand and don't make her feel cornered or trapped. 

Caleb’s is the longest and most confusing.

_Loud noises, crowded spaces, open spaces, red, any touching, standing too close, talking too loud, talking too suddenly, cornering him, the shine of metal (coins?), looking at him too long, forcing him to eat, forcing him to make a decision, fire, gold, ~~Nott~~ (?)._

It's a strange jumbled list rife with question marks and things scratched out, even rewritten because he's just not entirely sure. There's a lot more he doesn't even know yet and he wants to talk to Caleb more, learn to know what to avoid and do so he can do his part to make things a little bit easier, but the wizard avoids them all as much as he can. And Yasha told him he should wait for Caleb to approach them all first.

But today Caleb came down from the room and asked if they could go to Pumat's and Molly was all too eager to leap at the opportunity. He has a lot of questions. One of them namely being the absence of a particular cat at the wizard's side when he knows for sure they gave Caleb everything he needed to get Frumpkin back. The wizard even said he wanted to stay to fix one of the other spells at the tavern the other day so Molly doesn't quite understand why he doesn't just summon his cat back like he usually would. 

And it's just him and the wizard now, the others heading for their own errands at the other side of the city. Caduceus wanting to find a herbal kit or something so he can make his own health potions and Jester wanting to search for diamonds and talking animatedly about a new thing she can do with the Traveler's help.

Molly doesn't break the silence between them as they walk. Instead he watches Caleb. 

The man is hunched, shoulders tensed, eyes occasionally darting to the others milling about and back to the ground. He's covered in layers of grime and dirt and he's not sure when the last time he saw the wizard truly clean was, but it's been awhile. His scruff is back in full now, as unkempt and unruly as the rest of him, eyes ringed in sunken bruises and he looks everything but the picture of health and rest. His clothes hang off him more than they used to and he's afraid that without that ratty road coat the man might look more skeletal than human. 

Yesterday, Caleb and Beau had reunited with the rest of them and the monk had looked terribly guilty and the wizard at her side had been spaced out again. Numbly going about the rest of his day and Molly had watched him, concerned as to what exactly was going on in his head or what had happened between the morning and that afternoon to cause the drastic shift.

He had seemed better that morning, more talkative if not a bit irritated by something, but at least he was present. 

Now he's back to this jittery after image again today.

“Did something happen yesterday?” Molly probes casually, glancing away from Caleb when the other's eyes dart to him. 

“No.” 

He's lying.

Molly can tell. There's a biting tension to his voice that betrays him. But he won't press him. The list in his pocket practically burns as a reminder of that careful boundary he needs to maintain. And it's hard because he really wants to know. 

“Is there a reason you haven't summoned Frumpkin again?” He asks instead and he doesn't miss the stutter in Caleb's steps, the way he falters. 

“The spell is damaged.”

Another lie. 

“Can you fix it?” 

“Yes.” 

Another lie and he's confused about that one.

He knows even if it was broken beyond repair the wizard could fix it. Caleb is smart and resourceful and always seems to find a way to do what he needs to do. So why would he lie about that?

That concern doesn't leave him, even when the wizard buys more ink, paper and a familiar spool of silver thread that he cradles like a lifeline and something infinitely precious. 

He's seen the man look at Frumpkin like that before, but never that spool of shining wire. 

Caleb looked down at it like it could save him. 

 

 

 

\-------------------------------///----------------------

 

 

 

Caleb tries not to think about how he lied to Molly and the fact that the tiefling didn't even question him about it. He knows the other knows he was lying, yet Molly still didn't press for the truth. 

He _can_ get Frumpkin back. 

It is well within his capabilities, but that voice in him, the one that sounds too much like Ikithon, tells him he can't even begin to attempt to cast a ritual spell like that until he has himself under complete control. 

Casting, and summoning for that matter, is all about control after all. 

And attempting to bring a fey creature, with a carefully contracted pact, back into the material plane with him is not wise when he can barely keep his thoughts from spinning out of control when he sees a flash of red or smells leather. 

He is not worthy of casting that spell yet. Not until he can keep this thing inside him under tight constraints. 

Frumpkin is a _luxury_. 

~~A comfort he no longer deserves~~. 

But this silver wire. This alarm spell is necessary for maintaining the things in his thoughts. 

He _needs_ to cast it even if he isn't stable enough for his own liking.

He strings it around the room, draws the symbols and mutters the words that come to him easily and he contemplates only allowing himself to pass through without it going off. He reluctantly tacks on the ones he has to share the room with after a moment.

 

He curls up in the corner and it's different. It's almost relaxing to know that if someone he doesn't know enters he will know about it again. 

It doesn't stop him from thinking about how even if they did there's a damning part of him that might freeze up. Like he had in the tavern. 

He tries not to think about that as he falls into that calming black. Sleep drawing him down with the alluring promise of rest. 

 

__

_His wrists are caught, captured in vice-grips that hurt worse than chafing steel and he's trapped underneath something, pressed face down into a slide of slipping sheets._

_Teeth bury into his shoulder and pull, stripping meat from his bones. He cries out, yelping and keening as he tries to break the grip, but he can't and it only squeezes harder. Nails like ragged claws bite into the undersides of his wrists and he whines, scrabbles against the sliding swathe of red beneath him and the creature holding him down just laughs, it's chest rumbling against his back._

_He turns his head, eyes rolling frantically, tries to find an escape, tries to ignore the thing eating him and he only finds an infinite blackness beyond the edges of where the crimson drops off into nothing._

_No._

_Not nothing._

_He blinks._

_There's someone out there._

_He recognizes all of them, but not the blank looks on their faces._

_That derision in their eyes._

_He doesn't recognize that._

_He doesn't recognize their voices, but it doesn't stop their words from hurting because he knows those faces, ringed around him and witnessing every aspect of his suffering._

_“Disgusting.” Mollymauk._

_“Pathetic.” Jester._

_“Weak.” Caduceus._

_“Why didn't you say no?” Fjord._

_“Why didn't you fight back?” Beauregard._

_“Why did you break when I didn't?” Yasha._

_“Why did you let him do it again?” Nott._

_“Why did you disappoint me?” Mother._

_“Why couldn't you be stronger?” Father._

_“What are you crying for, you would just let him do it again anyways, wouldn't you?” Eodwulf._

_“Why would you just let it happen to you?” Astrid._

_“Why?”_

_And they are all speaking as one now and he can't escape their eyes, can't get them to look away while he's trapped under this thing. Caught in its grip and he doesn't want them to see him like this-- he never wanted them to to see him like this._

_**“Why?”** _

_He shakes his head, presses his forehead to the sheets, eyes screwed shut, teeth grit against the slide of blood, hot and sickly down his back, his arms, his thighs--_

_“Why?”_

_He shakes his head harder, fingers curled into claws in the frictionless satin. He just wants them to stop staring as the beast noses along his spine, spit, blood, hot, liquid fire dripping from its lips onto him._

_“Why weren't you in control?” And that voice echoes above them all and Caleb turns his head to see Ikithon, dressed in robes and staring down his nose at him._

_Caleb wants to ask any of them for help, he wants to leave this place, get the monster off his back and away from him, but he knows none of them will help him, not when they're looking at him like that._

_“Why, indeed?” Lorenzo purrs in his ear and Caleb thrashes, pushes against the grip on his wrists, the weight settled on the back of his thighs, trapping his legs._

__

__

It's no use, he opens his mouth to beg, to plead as Lorenzo releases his wrists, trails his fingers up his arms, down along his back, his ribs, settling over his hips and down to rest on his thighs. Nothing leaves his lips no matter how hard he tries even as roughened thumbs run along his inner thighs, in slow circles that make his skin crawl, his chest tighten, and water film his vision as he scrabbles uselessly at the sheets.

_Nothing is trapping his wrists now, nothing is stopping him from clawing at Lorenzo as the fingers dig in, move back up to splay over his hips and slip along his heaving sides. Unclothed skin settles against his, a tanned hand, laced in faded tattoos and scars braces beside his head and he could snap his teeth into it, lash out, but he's stuck and trembling at the sight of it. Lorenzo leans down, the press of heat along every inch of him and the weight of him is suffocating and Caleb gasps, choking on spit and the heady curl of iron on his tongue. Until it smothers him into the shining, slipping red thats morphed into nothing but blood beneath him. He shuts his eyes against it, cries out against the agony lancing up his spine--_

_He tumbles through the crimson into a pool of reflective black, blinking and shivering, clawing at his skin and thrashing. He scrambles up from where it tries to pull him under the surface when he realizes he's no longer trapped. The sopping shadows stick to his limbs and he struggles against them, sinks down to his knees before he notices someone standing at the other side of this endless pool-- and he knows who it is._

_There's a burning rage under his sternum and he wants to send his fist into that flame bitten skull, watch it shatter, feel it break under his hand again as he claws his way through this sucking muck towards him. Caleb drags his way out of it, stumbles towards him until he's able to stand on that uneven surface and he's facing him again._

_“I didn't want it! I didn't!” He snarls up at it because he didn't and he wants it to know that because he couldn't say it in the waking world._

_It just turns, fire forever eating its flesh, lips pulled into a sharp and familiar grin that shines gold._

_“Oh, but didn't you?” It says, rumbling and encompassing in this empty space._

_“You agreed to it, didn't you?” Those familiar figures are emerging from the muck beside it as it continues._

_“And I think you even enjoyed it that one time, right?”_

__

__

_Caleb looks at their faces, tries to plead with them, make them understand that what Lorenzo is saying isn't true, but those puppet versions of them just stare._

_He didn't want to._

_He didn't want to and he made him, but he didn't---_

_“No, I---I didn't-- I,” Caleb shakes his head, tries to take a step back but he's caught in that murky dark again and he watches their forms scatter and coalesce again. “That is not--”_

_“Not what? Indicative of anything?” It-- Lorenzo chuckles. “I think it is.”_

_It's not, it can't be because that means there's something wrong with him._

_Something sick in his head and in his body._

_“I think there's something in you that craves being controlled because you've never been in control.”_

_“No, I didn't want that. I didn't-- I didn't want any of that. I never-”_

_“Are you sure?”_

_“I'm--” He pauses. They are just staring at him and their accusations hurt._

_“That doesn't sound too convincing to me." Lorenzo crosses his arms. “You let that man manhandle you in the tavern. What if he intended on doing more than roughing you up? Would you have just let it happen?”_

_“No, I woul-- I would…”_

_“Burn him? Hit him? Fight him like you didn't fight me?” Lorenzo laughs, “No, I don't think so. You weren't made for that.” His form flickers at the edges and the others do too and he watches them drip into liquid shadows, “You were made to serve beneath someone.”_

_Lorenzo steps forward, flames eating from under his ribs and framing his face in an internal hellish light. Grabs him by the chin before Caleb can recoil, nails digging into his cheeks, pinching into his teeth. “Leading was always a problem for you, but orders are so easy aren't they?” He tilts Caleb's head up and it's almost like he isn't there, but he thinks he is. “They are simple, they take away that responsibility you hate when there's lives in your hands and tough decisions you can't make.”_

_“No, I--”_

_Lorenzo smiles almost sadly, pitying, “Why do you still deny it? You know it's true. I know it's true. Those people out there, the ones you call friends and family, they know it's true too." The deceased slaver leans close, breath hot against Caleb's cheek. "And so they treat you like a child because of it. Like some simple-minded dog that needs help doing even the simplest tasks. Like eating and sleeping and living.”_

_Lorenzo tsks, carding his fingers through his hair and Caleb doesn't like this, doesn't like kneeling in this absolute nothing with only him here. “You think you're in control of everything, but you control _nothing_.” Lorenzo leans back, looking down his nose at him, his face is eaten away by fire but it only makes the teeth stand out sharper. "You are nothing.” _

_“No, I am--”_

_“You are and every part of you knows it.”_

_“I-- I am-”_

_“Say it.”_

_He shakes his head._

_“Say. It.”_

_Fingers dig into his scalp, tear at his hair, and he doesn't want to say it. He doesn't want to--_

_“Say it. You already did once, it's not hard.”_

_He doesn't remember ever saying it._

_“It's easier when you admit it. When you stop denying yourself and accept where you stand and what you're worth. So, just say it,” the voice croons in his ear and it feels like he's suspended and kneeling all at once-- and then suddenly he's laid out on his back, the canvas of a tent over head, and skin chafing at his shoulders with each repetitive and unwanted motion._

_He pushes at the thing curled over him, shoves at its chest, tries to halt that metronomic hitch of hips against him and ignore that terrible matching heat in his gut, resonating where it moves the hand that's curled around him. And he shakes his head, arches against the sweat-stuck bed roll under him-- he never wanted this._

_He hates it as a heat coils impossibly tighter in his gut, wishes he would wither away even as he edges towards it with the buck of his hips, breath skittering and frantic with a misplaced anxiety that hounds after a thread of something besides pain and torment in the blacks and greys trapped in his skull. And he doesn't want these bursts of light or the snapping, white hot synapses flaring across him anymore as he gasps and writhes agaisnt his better judgement. As he bites against what could be a moan if he didn't want to also scream, if he didn't want to claw his throat out as he chokes on it and stares up into nothing. Avoiding the tanned skin, the faded patchwork of sharp tattoos, the cracked and leathery skin rasping against him, the blunt nails dug into his hips, and the sweat slicking his skin--_

_He doesn't want this, but his body isn't his to control-- and he doesn't want this-- but the flush settled over him says something different. The way he hitches up into the fingers around him, pants and practically mewls-- the way it doesn't hurt like before-- it all curls up, heavy and stone-like on his chest. And he wishes this thing-- the man-- the beast curled over him, grunting and huffing, its teeth bared in its own snarl, would just tear him apart again-- because anything is better than this._

_He tumbles over that gnarled precipice against his will with a shout that burns like acid on its way out._

_Shoved over the edge by calloused hands and cruel smiles and he thinks something in him shatters-- because he _didn't want this_ but his body did. A pleasant and familiar heat settles in his bones, low in his abdomen even as the beast doesn't stop. He lists against the rough textiles beneath him, stares wide-eyed at everything and nothing overhead. He wants to expel that sated warmth as fingers dig into his ribs, a hand curls over his throat-- Slop his stomach out onto the ground with the rest of its contents-- bury himself in the grave he dug for Mollymauk and never come back out--_

_He falls into that empty pit of earth that opens up beneath him and he doesn't remember this-- there's dirt soaked in crimson falling on him and he's inhaling that soiled earth and he--_

__

He wakes up.

Choking and and shaking, a disquieting heat still settled over his skin and in the pit of his gut.

He curls up. 

Hides his shame and nausea in the dark and he can't stop that hitching wet sound from leaving his lungs now that it's started.

He hopes that none of them can hear him falling apart, that none of them are privy to whatever perversion has laced itself into his thoughts and dreams either. He thought it was getting better but it's so much worse now, because his body is working against him in every way it possibly can and he doesn't know how to make it stop. 

One of the others shuffles in their sleep and he startles, presses further into the wall and further into his corner of blankets because he can't let them see him like this. See this shambling and crying thing, pitifully fearful of its own body and mind. 

It's still and quiet except for the occasional loud breath or shifting of sheets.

He tries not to think about that fever stuck under his skin, the one that won't go away. And that animal part of him, so desperate for anything, that it imagines hands. Far gentler and far more caring. Sapphire blue, sea green, ruddy lavender, pale-furred and he hates every second of it because he wouldn't ever debase them like that. He would never let them touch something so tainted and ruined, but his mind doesn't care and it conjures and takes what it wants in his own head because he can't control it.

He can't help but wonder if it would make it better though. If he let one of them do whatever they want to him because they are safe and predictable and they don't want to hurt him. And he hates himself for thinking it. He curls even further into himself, tries to make those thoughts go away by digging his nails into his wrists, drags nails down his forearms as if he can dig them out, but they stick and grow and fester into something he can't contain. 

He hates this thing inside of him. 

He hates this body. 

“Caleb?” 

It's lilting and quiet in the dark, but he knows that voice. Remembers it in his head, calling him everything he already knows he is in an echoing phantom of its reality.

The lavender tiefling is staring at him from his own bed, an elevated pedestal compared to the floor Caleb has claimed as his own. He feels his chest tighten, hunching in on himself further and ducking his head. Molly can't possibly miss the tracks down his face or the way he's shaking and trembling, pressed against the wall. 

“Are you alright?” 

Molly goes to rise and Caleb snaps out of it. Swipes at the damning tracks his cheeks and stops the trembles in his limbs. He's fine.

He's _fine_. 

“Just a… just a bad dream.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” 

And there it is. That infinite bleeding heart and absolute caring from the other, and Caleb doesn't know what to do with that. 

A part of him wants to cling to it. That base part of him that is desperate for something-- He thinks it wants protection and kindness, warmth, but he doesn't deserve any of those things, not from any of these people. 

“No.” 

He wants to. 

He wants to spill these things out of him so they can't hurt him anymore, but he can't and he won't. And he can say no. He can say no here and he does because he knows someone will eventually listen. 

“Okay…that's...that's fine. Try and get some more sleep if you can, Caleb.” 

Molly doesn't pressure him. 

Even though Caleb can hear that concern in his voice and the disappointment. He doesn't demand answers or order him to say the things in his head.

He let's Caleb say no. 

He listens and leaves him be, turning away from him. The tension begins to unwind in his frame. Someone listened to him. He controlled that scenario. He made that choice and it wasn't veiled under threats and confusion. 

He said no and it wasn't ignored. 

He wants more of that. More of that ability to deny and be listened to. But he can't help the things in him that tell him he doesn't deserve such luxuries. 

~~He wants that control.~~

He closes his eyes. 

There's an idea. 

The inception of a thought planted there with soft eyes and a soft voice. Because he knows none of them would ever hurt him even if he let them take away the things in his head. He would like to think that at least, even if the versions of them in his head are cruel, cold-eyed, and callous. 

He ignores that inkling for now. He can't-- He won't let them anyways-- He would never-- 

He turns to contemplate going downstairs instead, about drinking it all away again, but he knows that's a dangerous dependency to walk down as well.

So he tries to chase after sleep again on his own.

But it's more of the same. 

Just the things in his head, animated and brought to life through the grotesque versions of his friends and family to remind him why he's worth nothing. 

And he listens... 

 

 

\-------------

 

 

They still have a few days before they leave for the coast and Fjord wants to discuss things moving forward with _everyone_. Including him. And Caleb goes reluctantly. 

All he hears are the whispering echoes of their conjured accusations in his head still. It's hard to focus on what they are really saying now as a result and he tries to keep up, but the things they aren't saying are getting louder with each passing minute. 

He pretends like nothing is wrong, pretends like it doesn't feel like his eardrums are bleeding or his skull is stuffed with buzzing gnats. Or even that when Fjord talks he doesn't keep hearing that same question over and over.

~~‘Why didn't you say no?’~~

It's crescendoing, rising in volume and it hurts, his head hurts, and he wants them to stop. He needs everything to just stop for a few seconds because he thinks his skull might burst. 

He wants them to stop. 

He wants them out of his head.

He needs them to **_shut. up_. **

He doesn't even notice that the other's at the table have stopped talking, their eyes frozen to him and all a miasma of confusion and furrowed brows. 

He tries to figure out why. Tries to understand why they are staring at him and why the voices have stopped, but he can't remember.

“Caleb? Are you… alright?” 

Why would Fjord ask that? Has he done something he wasn't supposed to do? He thought he was doing better. That they were asking less questions and barring the slip up last night he hadn't heard that particular question in awhile. He needs to know what he did wrong so he can fix it. 

“Was he talking to us?” Beau whispers to Yasha next to her, eyeing him with concern and Caleb hates it. 

“Do you need us to be quieter?” Molly asks and his voice is uncharacteristically subdued and lowered, the tiefling frowning as well. 

In that moment Caleb realizes he might of said something out loud. That he might have let something slip past the boundaries of his thoughts and his hands tremble where he's hidden them beneath the table. All of it is supposed to stay stuck up there where he can at least control it.

They haven't stopped staring at him and as time ticks on he can see their faces morph, into pity and somehow they flicker into the blank-eyed derision from his dreams as well and a fire leaps up under his ribs.

“What are you staring at?” He snaps. He doesn't like the way they are looking at him. 

Like he's out of control. 

Some of them recoil, like they didn't expect him to bark and snarl back at them. Like he's supposed to just cower and mutter and shrink away from their questions-- and he hates their expectations of him. That in their eyes he's some demere thing, some kickable and weak-willed dog--

“Caleb, you've been muttering to yourself the whole time you've been down here and you told us to ‘shut up’ a few seconds ago when no one was talking,” Fjord explains, face pinched, eyes liquid and soft, and Caleb wants to tear that pointed sadness out of them. 

So? So what if he was talking to himself? What do they care? _Why_ do they care? Why can't they just leave it alone? Why do they have to drag it into the light and rake him over the coals for all the things he can't control anymore? 

Why do they have to keep looking at him? 

“I am fine,” he all but snarls it at them, all of it matched by a curl of regret with the way Jester flinches and Fjord ducks his head. 

It's hard to cling onto that though, not as something ugly and angry bares its teeth in him. He wants to pit it against something, let it tear into something because it burns where it's coiled and waiting inside of him. 

“That's the biggest lie I've ever heard any of you assholes say,” Beau snorts and it's a sneer, and he can't help but bristle-- because what gives her the, right?

He can't help but feel cornered by them, pressed back against his chair and pinned beneath the scalpel sharp inspections they're making. Impossibly caught under their searching gazes, the stretch of the tavern to all sides of him, and the unknown patrons milling about. All of it sends his heart skittering beneath the surmounting fury. 

He curls his lip, bares his own teeth back at Beauregard, and it's the most genuine emotion he's probably shown them in weeks-- but he doesn't care-- he's trapped and alone and he needs them to look away.

“What do you know?” He watches the monk flinch back, likes she didn't expect that much vitriol to fall from him. 

Her confusion snaps into her own brand of growing rage just as quickly, and he can see there is frustration there as well. But he knows she doesn't like being challenged, especially her intelligence, and he wants her to snarl back at him. It's easier to understand her ire then her pity anyways. 

“I know you fucking act like you aren't a complete fucking mess for one thing. I know that you don't sleep, that you barely eat, and that this is the most I've heard you talk in days now. I know you're not fucking okay, Caleb, so why the fuck do you act like we won't notice?” 

Everything she says cuts and he tries not to wince. He knows she thinks he's weak. She already had to fight his battles for him and he can still hear that phantom version of her in his head. 

~~’Why didn't you fight back?’~~

He has never been as strong as her. 

And he wants to be. 

Maybe he wants that anger and that fire in her to be his so he can make the world heel beneath him where it can never touch him, Maybe he wants to be able to control the things around him like she can. 

“Beau!” Fjord goes to stop her, probably wanting to deescalate the situation, but Caleb doesn't want it to. 

He wants to watch this all _burn._

“Why do you care?” He bites out and he can feel the other's staring at him-- staring between the two of them where tension snaps and crackles and ignites dangerously.

Caleb doesn't care anymore, doesn't care about their eyes and their thoughts and their words. 

He likes this feeling, likes the way it simmers beneath his skin and makes him feel more alive than anything else. And he wants more of it.

“‘Why the fuck do _I_ care?’” She repeats, nose wrinkling, hands on the table as she leverages herself out of her chair and Yasha goes to stop her but Beau dodges her attempts.

The monk is quicker than all of them as she snatches the scarf around his neck and pulls him forward to snarl in his face-- and he can see she's losing herself to that inferno in her eyes, “I care because you're my fucking friend, asshole!”

He knows what to say to snap it. Snap that resolve and restraint and have her swinging at him-- and he wants her to. He needs her to. He would rather _hurt_ than answer their questions or their accusing eyes. 

“We were _never_ friends.” 

There's a hush from the others trying to stop Beau and they've gone still and silent and they're staring at him again. He can't help but grimace at the monk and watch that thread unravel in her.

See that muscle twitch in her jaw before she's pushing him away with more force than necessary and he goes toppling back into his seat. It's far too hard and the chair tips back from under him until he's crashing into the ground. The back of his skull cracks into the floorboards and there's shouting and lights and it's hard to focus on much except snippets of color and sound around him. 

“Beau, what the fuck?!” 

“I didn't think he'd fucking fall like that!” 

There's hands on his arms, tugging at him, and he pulls away from them, recoils, shaking and wide-eyed. He hoists himself to his feet, frantically brushes off those searching fingers, and freezes at the sight of their concerned eyes from around the table and the way Beau is watching him, scared and frightened of herself-- and him, and he needs to get away from it all. 

He stumbles back, barely catches himself on a nearby table, chokes back a panicked sound trying to slip its way out, because they're still watching him and that anger is gone now, and replaced with something far more frightening. 

He makes his retreat upstairs because it's safer there. Safe from questions and eyes and others and these strangers he still calls friends because he has _nothing_ left. 

They don't stop him. 

He curls up in his corner and thinks about everything he's managed to ruin just by existing and he wonders what it would be like to finally stop that. 

To take that fire out of himself and let it bleed out where it can't hurt anyone ever again. 

 

 

 

\---------------------------------//------------------------------

 

 

 

 

“Beau, what the fuck was that?” Molly can't help but parrot Nott-- because seriously, what the hell.

The monk winces and looks at her own hands and finally snarls, balling them into fists on the tabletop. 

“I know you all like to play pretend and shit. Like to dodge around the fact that he's falling apart, but I don't. Someone had to fucking say it. And if I have to be the asshole in this, then fine. I'm the fucking asshole.” 

“That could have at least been approached a bit differently--”

“Fucking when, Fjord? When he's snapped to the point he doesn't even know who the fuck we are anymore? When he's finally trying to kill himself?” She lets out a wry laugh, tugging at the wraps on her arms. “I mean when the fuck are we gonna talk about the fact that he tears up his own wrists, huh?”

“He's hurting himself?” Nott's voice is small and thin and Molly thinks it might snap. 

“Yeah. He is. I know what it looks like when you don't want people to see something like that." Beau crosses her arms, looking off to the side. 

“Well, what are we supposed to do?” Jester asks pleadingly, looking to all of them like one of them holds that spark of hope she's searching for. 

“Talk to him?” Beau supplies, but he can tell she doesn't think that's an avenue she can approach herself. 

“I don't think it's very wise to corner him about any of this,” Caduceus adds, looking to where the wizard disappeared to. 

“Well, he'll talk to you, Nott. Won't he? ” Jester turns to the goblin. 

“He doesn't really… he doesn't talk to me anymore.” 

“Can you try? Please?” Jester practically begs.

“I don't--” 

“Nott,” Yasha says, reaching over to gently clasp the goblin's nervously wringing hands in her own, “He needs to talk to you. You're the only one he trusts more than anything. More than any of us.” 

“But, he won't even look at me.” 

“That doesn't mean he won't listen,” Molly adds, because he knows if Caleb will listen to anyone it will be her. 

“I'll-- I'll try.” 

“Thank you,” Yasha breathes and let's Nott go but the goblin hesitates, teeters on the edge of action. 

She seems to think about something, shakes her head and takes off after Caleb. 

 

 

 

 

\-------------------------------------//-------------------------

 

 

 

The door creaks open with the protest of hinges and he's still staring at his now unwrapped wrists. At the nail marks carved into them and down into the scars along his forearms. He contemplates digging out that fire out even as there are footsteps, contemplates driving his nails into his arm harder, sharper, deeper, until he pulls this feeling out from under his skin. 

“Caleb?” 

He flinches. She sounds sad and small and scared and he never wanted to make her sound like that. 

“I'm sorry about what happened downstairs…” Nott starts and he ducks his head.

It wasn't her fault. And it wasn't Beau's fault. It was his fault, because he let himself lash out when he should have had that anger leashed and restrained. 

“Can I talk to you for a bit? Please?” 

She sounds so unsure. So frightened that he will tell her no. And he can't tell her to leave. 

He can't. 

“Ja..." Her eyes snap over to him when he mutters it, her having approached the bundle at the corner of the room and passed by where he's tucked himself. He isn't in his corner anymore. 

He's leaned against the side of one of the beds now. And somehow, he thought he could get up on one of them finally. Thought that his mind would understand where his body didn't that Lorenzo is dead and that it's _just_ a bed. But he had touched it, sat on it, wrists brushing along the cotton, laid back on it, and the fabric had slid against his skin. He had nearly lost the meager contents of his stomach, his head is still pounding after he scrambled off of it and collapsed on the floor. 

She approaches where he's pressed himself up against the bed frame, slowly and low, like he's a feral creature with bared teeth and poised to run or fight, but he does neither. He lets her fold her legs beneath her and sit before him, and he does not look at her eyes or her hand. 

It's quiet between them. 

She reaches for his hands and he recoils when he sees that missing finger again and he remembers why she has it. Because he's selfish.

“Why do you do that to yourself?” she asks in a hushed whisper.

He knows she's talking about his wrists and his knuckles. The tearing nail marks that have become more than just scabs at this point and he can't deny them as anything but self inflicted, not when they look like an animal has torn at them. 

“I... I don't know.” 

Nott sighs, but she doesn't press him about it. 

She sits in the quiet with him and he lets his thoughts rattle around in his head. 

“Why did you protect me back there?”

He hadn't expected that question. But he knows exactly what she is talking about. He knows that she knows he traded himself to go up on that table in her place multiple times. 

He hopes she doesn't know what else he traded himself for. 

“You're my family.” 

She sighs, wringing her hands. “That means we protect each other. It's a give and take relationship, not a sacrifice, Caleb.” 

But isn't that what he is?

Just some sacrificial lamb for all the things in the world to fall on so they don't hurt anyone else. Just a worthless, empty bowl to spill blood and spit and dirt into so it doesn't soil anyone else. What else is he worth if not keeping her and the others safe even if it destroys him? 

Otherwise, he's just a coward. 

“I couldn't let them… you don't deserve those things.” 

“And you do?”

“Yes.”

“Why Caleb?” 

“I'm a…” 

_Murderer._

He thinks about fire. 

_Slave._

The brand on the back of his right hand glares back at him.

_Cannibal…_

And he can tell her that at least because she will not hate him for it. 

“Do you remember...when you told me that you'd eaten a child before? By accident?” He starts, glancing up at her, brows pinched.

“Yes?”

“I think I have too..”

“Oh..." Nott says and it trembles. “Oh, Caleb, no…” 

He laughs because what else is he supposed to do. He knows what human tastes like and he wishes he didn't. 

“When?” 

He startles, glancing up at her again. 

Why does she care when or how?

It happened and he can't forget the burst of it across his tongue-- and it makes him nauseous thinking about it, because it hadn't tasted repulsive or disgusting.

That's the most terrifying part.

If Lorenzo had never leered at him, never implied with every inch of intent about what the meat was, would he have ever known? What if as an unknown, something in him thought it was good? 

There's a violent curl of nausea and his stomach aches in tandem with it. 

”Caleb, when did this happen?” 

“When I left,” he finally relents.

“When you and Yasha went with him?” 

He nods. 

“Is that why you don't like eating around us? Is that why you don't eat meat now?” 

He goes to nod, but it's not entirely true. 

That's only part of it.

The other part he can't explain. Can't articulate in so many words. Something in him tells him to do that. To not eat, to deny this vessel food because it doesn't deserve it, because it makes it all better, because it makes it easier to think. Because if he keeps starving he won't look the same. He won't attract whatever attention he attracted from Lorenzo. He won't have anyone look at him ever again. 

“Caleb… you know it wasn't--” She pauses and he can tell she's trying her best, she’s trying to find the right words, “It wasn't your choice. You didn't want to do that. It doesn't make you whatever you think you are.” 

It _does_.

All of it does. 

Every single part of it does, even the things she isn't referring to.

It is wholly and irrevocably forever part of him, and like how he killed his parents and branded himself murderer the brand on his hand and the things in his head marks him _victim_ and right now he doesn't know which one he hates more. 

Both are pathetic and ugly and he wants no part of them.

“But I said yes.”

And he's not talking about the food anymore. 

Not about the things he was forced to eat, but the things he agreed to. 

“Wha--?” 

“I agreed to it. I said me. I chose me. I---I did not say _no..._ ” he continues, cutting her off because she needs to understand.

“Caleb,” Her voice is even smaller now, even quieter and even more hurt and he doesn't like the way it sounds because it makes his chest tight. 

“He gave me a choice and I did not say no, Nott.” 

He wants to grab her hand, plead with her, make her see the way he sees himself so she can get the others to leave him alone, but he also doesn't want to be alone, he's afraid of it. 

“I--I let him-- he-- I was... I was…" He stops. He won't say it, not yet. Rubs at his jaw and kneads at his eye with the heel of his palm with a thready sigh. “I want it gone.” 

“What do you want gone?” 

He's glad she's patient, that she at least lets him stutter his way through his words and stumble his way through coherency.

“I do not... I there is no way to explain it..." He rubs the heel of his palm over the floorboards, the rough texture soothing his nerves. “I think... Sometimes, I think there is something... maybe there's something wrong with this body.” He chokes on that a bit, pauses and has to recollect what he was saying, “It is not.. it's not mine...I..” 

“I think I… I think I lost it… back there somewhere.” he inhales shakily, shaking his head. “And I don't know how to get it back." His chest hurts and he can't figure out why. "I do not think I can.” He runs his fingers over the scabbing marks on his wrists, “I don't… I do not think I _want_ to.”

“What do you mean?” she asks, brow furrowed, leaned forward, ears pressed back and eyes wide.

“It… It was taken from me.”

“But you're right here.”

“But it is not _mine_." He twists his hand in his scarf and he's frustrated. He can't explain it and that anger is trying to make its way back. “This is not mine." He gestures jerkily with his free hand to the rest of him. "This-- this fear... This sickness. I--” 

He looks up at her, brow furrowed and confused and more lost than he's ever felt, even when he was drifting aimlessly in a sea of grey. “Nott, I -- I do not want it anymore. I do not want any of it.”

Her face crumples and she wraps her arms around herself, eyes pained and wide and the gathering of water at the edges of them feels like acid. 

“What happened back there, Caleb?” 

He tugs at the end of the scarf, lets it coil tighter around his throat, the presence of it firm against his jugular, keeping it safe from the flash of teeth in the shadows. 

It keeps him from crumbling apart. 

“I--” 

~~I was pulled apart.~~

~~I was ruined.~~

~~I was broken~~. 

“I can not get him out of my head,” he finally settles on, breathing it out and the admittance burns along his skin like weakness. 

“Who?” He can tell she already knows. 

She just wants to hear him say it out loud, just hear him finally say it out loud. 

“He-- He will not leave me alone.”

There's the constant looming presence, the constant flash of gold, the constant press of hands where he doesn't want them.

There's a devil inside of him and he wants it gone. 

“Caleb, _who_?” 

He's shaking his head, burying his face in his hands, shoulders hitching-- but he won't cry, he won't cry even though it feels likes he's being torn apart right now.

“I can not--” 

“I want to hear you say it.” 

“I-” 

He can't. 

Its stuck in there.

“Caleb, you can't keep this bottled up forever.”

Yes, he can. 

“You can't hide from it.”

But he wants to. He needs to. _He will._

“It's going to eat you alive.”

Then let it.

_Please._ Gods, _please_ let it. Let it tear him apart so this thing can die with him. 

Nott cups the sides of his face and he's sags against the bed frame, unwilling to climb onto those sheets. The fine sheets that will slide against him in all the worst ways. 

“You have to say it.” She's staring at him, her eyes hard and determined. “You have to get it out.” 

His lips start to move of their own accord, caught up in the strength and conviction in her words, in her eyes and the crease in her brow. “I-- I was -” 

It sticks and he shakes his head, brushes her hands away and folds over his legs. 

He can't. 

He can't. 

He can't.

He won't. 

He'll never. 

He won't let it be said aloud where it can become real, where he can hear it echoed in his own ears, where he can see the flash of confirmation on her face and the sharp pity to follow. 

Because he doesn't want that label. 

A part of him wishes he could just tell her everything, but he doesn't want the dreaded label he bears to be extended past where it drifts about in his own head. Just like how he’s always subconsciously afraid of the fact that Beau could tell any one of them about him being a murderer. That label would stick and it would define him. Instead of being just Caleb the wizard to them, there would always be that small detail tacked on forever, tucked somewhere within the pauses. 

He also knows they would treat him far differently than they do now, and he doesn't want that either. He just wants things to go back to the way they were before. 

His ribs flutter, chest flighty and he gasps in a breath, and then another, head swimming. 

“It's okay, I'm sorry, another time maybe…” She goes to run her fingers over his hair and he can't help but flinch back from it. 

“I'm sorry...” She whispers, retracting her hand and he let's her grasp his limp hands in her smaller ones. 

He doesn't want to voice the things he'll never say. 

He doesn't want to admit that the only other experiences he had were when he was a teen. Scared and desperate for anything other than the waking threat of punishment if he didn't do something right, didn't learn an incantation fast enough or right enough or to the utmost of standards. He had latched onto soft blue eyes and pale hair, and he had fallen into her and her him, and they had found comfort in each other in the dark where Trent couldn't find them. 

But now even that feels tainted and warped. 

He had never-- 

Those things-- 

Those parts of him stuck in satin sheets and underneath hidden stars-- 

He doesn't-- 

_He doesn't want them back._

Nott cups his face again, tilting his head up from where he's hidden, gentle and willing to let him fight her if need be, but he goes with it, looks into those wide, pained, yellows. 

“You can tell me when you're finally ready,” And it's the surest he's ever heard her speak, the cracks that usually riddle her speech gone. “I'll always be here for you.” 

He knows she will. 

But he cannot make the same promise back.

\---------------------

 

 

He pretends for them. After that brief slip up and his talk with Nott. He pretends and it's far easier than he thought it was to pretend like everything is fine. 

He pretends that whatever talk with Nott he had somehow magically healed him. 

He walks and talks, lives among them for the next two days in Zadash and they smile and talk back to him-- and he can tell they are happier for it. Happier with this mask he's pulled over himself and hidden behind. 

They stop asking as many questions. 

They stop looking at him differently. 

They stop seeing the way he's falling apart at night, because he keeps it hidden. 

He can see there is doubt on some of them and he tries to figure out a way to erase that. 

And it comes to him.

On the second night and a day before they need to leave for the coast. 

He's back in that underbelly of the tavern, drinking again, because it helps him keep that mask on and the others don't question it too terribly, because they all drink alongside him too. Jester and Caduceus are the only ones that eye him with any amount of concern but, he evades that with a small smile that's alarmingly easy to fake and they buy it with smiles of their own. 

Manipulation is easy. It had been his specialty after all. He had always been able to get whatever he wanted, pretend like he was a traitor's friend and later burn them to ashes under orders and after he pried the information from them. 

All of that comes in handy now. 

And the nearly paranoid idea that worms its way into his thoughts comes on the back of knowing. Knowing that almost all of them probably know what happened by now. That they just might know it all. That they've had plenty of time to tell each other, gossip, and figure it out. And that's dangerous because that means they are watching him differently. Sometimes it feels like they're still watching him differently-- and he can't have that. 

It might be the flush of warmth in his veins, or even the buzzing in his thoughts from the the ale clutched in his hands, but he thinks it's a perfect solution. 

He can prove to them he's fine. He can prove that he's in control of this thing in his head. It's an idea that crackles to life in him and twists into an inferno.

It's insatiable, it's feverish, and in it's sweltering heat it makes perfect and irrevocable sense. 

He can erase it. He can cover it up. 

He just needs to _replace_ it.


	15. Sacrifice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Major Warnings for Chapter (In Order):  
> -Use of Suggestion Spell on Unawares Person  
> -Highly Dubious Consent Situation (Brief)  
> -Use of (Modified) Friends Spell  
> -Attempted Assault

He can't explain it. 

He can't explain why it makes sense because it doesn't but that doesn't matter, not anymore. 

It's stuck in his head and it's burning where it crouches and rumbles and waits. 

He tries to drown it, doesn't care if he's losing whatever he's eaten that day or blacking out, because he just wants it out of him, but it's still there when he wakes up. 

It's still there and it won't go away and he's scared of it. 

Because that little spark is almost worse than the other things he's been shoving back, over and over and over, and it threatens to have those things come spilling out and he can't have that. 

So he has to do something about it. 

Even if he doesn't want to. 

He slinks into the room when no one is there, he knows they are all downstairs or out in the city. He rummages through Fjord's belongings because he knows the half-orc has to shave sometimes and if this is going to work he needs to looks as clean and clear cut as possible.

There's a straight razor, tucked into a simple wood handle and he palms it, ignoring that sparking thought in the back of his head at the sight of a blade. 

He'll give it back when he's done. It's not stealing. It's just borrowing. They can't yell at him for that. Can't hold a blade to his throat and tell him to drop it, can't pin him to a wall and explain that he can't do that, that he's part of their team now, because he's just _borrowing_.

He'll give it back. 

He nervously paces because he doesn't want to bathe but he has to. He has to shed this second skin of cloth and buckles that keeps him safe.

There's an ache behind his sternum, a bone deep frustration because it feels like his hand is being forced again, but it's him doing it this time and no one else. 

And he has to. 

He has to. 

He can't stop now. 

He slides gold across a counter, pays for a bathing room, doesn't look up to see the disgusted curl of the owner's lips or the sneer in their eyes. He knows he looks like something they'd find under their boot, but he will change that, because he has to. 

Met with the reality of it he just sits and stares at the basin, among this untainted room of tile and clean and everything pure and he feels like a blot sickness, of putrid and vile origin in a room of white. 

He doesn't deserve to be clean. 

But he has to be. 

Because he's only seen one member of their party ever level him with any kind of look indicative of lust… and only after he was shaven and new looking. 

So he has to make the outside different from the inside. 

He has to pretend like he's not rotting. 

He manages to peel off the coat, but he pauses when he reaches the buckle for the book holster. His ribs are flighty now, chest picking up speed. It feels like he's trapped by this thing in his head and he wants to curl up against the bars and ignore the thought, but he has to get better. 

He has to get this thing out of him. 

And this is the only way he can think of to do it. 

He manages to work his way out of his shirt eventually and the empty air is chilling against his skin. He can't help but stare at the door. Even if he knows no one will come through it. That the thing is dead. It still feels like he's curled up against a headboard, satin sliding under him and a platter of untouched food at the foot of bruised flesh and blood. 

When he's finally naked it's strangely difficult to breathe. 

He hasn't been this unprotected since the second time and he's shivering and it's not just the cold settled around him anymore.

He steps into the water and it curls warmly against his skin, but it's not soothing.

It feels like he's stepping into a baptism of poison. 

Clear and insidious. 

He submerges himself in it, numbly watches the layers of dirt and grime and sweat drift off of him and swirl in the water. He can't help but feel like a lamb being bathed for sacrifice. Cleaned up to a pristine alabaster before its throat will be slit and red spilled across an altar for a god it will never know. 

He scrubs at himself mechanically, vacantly.

Peels back those protective layers that make everyone look away. That make them see a beggar, a parasite, something to spit at and ignore.

Something worthless. 

He lets that layer of ash and soot, the grease and the dirt, fall away from his hair and he knows it will shine like alluring copper and fire to all of them when he's done. 

And he doesn't want them to look at him, he doesn't want anyone to ever see him, but he needs him to because he has to fix this. 

His flesh turns red and raw and he's not sure when it happened but he's frantically dragging his hands over the skin of his arms, nails catching in the softened skin, but not splitting it. 

He doesn't want to do this. 

He never wants to do this. 

He wants this thing out of his head but not like this and he pulls at those scabbing marks on his wrists, watches red swirl in the water and twist into satin in his head and slide along his skin. Saturated and cloudy, splitting and snaking down until it drips into the water and dissipates into nothing. He watches it vein across the pale underside of his forearms and he thinks it's funny how water makes it look all so much more gruesome. Makes it look like he's put that razor to his old wounds rather than just his nails. 

But he would never do that. 

~~Not until it's all he has left.~~

He all but crawls from the water, leaving behind that shed carapace of dirt and blood. Emerging weak-kneed and shaking from the muddied water, wide eyed and feeling for all the world like a newborn foal in only the worst ways. 

Like there's wolves in the shadows.

Their eyes hungry and dark, a lust for his flesh clenched between their teeth and dripping from their maws. 

He's afraid because he will let them take what they want. 

He has to.

He doesn't have a choice anymore. 

He washes that wine red shirt.

The dusky red losing its layer of ash and shining like new. He hates it. He hates it because it was never his and it was never meant to be his, but he knows how it looks against pale freckled skin.

He lays it out to dry. Stares at it in the dancing pale golden light seeping in from the window. 

He can turn back. 

He doesn't have to do this.

He can stop this ritualistic preparation. Go back to the mud caked and ragged appearance he prefers and forget all about this plan. Stay curled up in that cage in his head and never try to leave it. 

He doesn't need to do this. 

He'll just keep pretending. 

Smile and choke through the jokes and the laughter that isn't meant to be his.

~~”You know that won't work.”~~

He knows it won't. 

He's not even sure who that person is.

The one in his head.

The one that tells him what to do, those compulsions, that little thought that intrudes and warps and compels. He thinks maybe it's always been there. It's hard to remember a time it wasn't. Maybe it always told him what to do, but it's just changed its tone over the years. Changed faces. Slipped on whatever mask will keep him obedient and keep him on that path it chooses before he can even decide for himself. 

It's been right before.

It's kept him alive.

It may have landed him in jail once, the woman telling him she didn't want him to dirty up the books and he had snuck in later anyways. But jail is where he met Nott, so it can't be a bad thing to latch onto those ideas and those compulsive needs he doesn't remember having, but are everything once they are there. 

It's only burnt him once.

That undying conviction.

That obsessiveness. 

He had wanted to prove his loyalty to an idea, to an Empire he thought he loved, and to people he thought loved him. 

But that was once. 

He's learned. 

He knows when to stop. 

And this is _necessary._

He carefully shaves, slowly drags the blade over his face, using the water from the bath because he has nothing else. It's not the best method and it takes far longer than if he had some reflective surface to work with or someone else to do it for him. Like when Yasha had impossibly managed to use the Magician’s Judge to peel away the scruff. 

There's nothing poetic about it this time.

He isn't placing his faith in a blade that was used to cleave those mages that deserved their deaths for what they did. Him unknowingly one of them, vulnerable beneath her careful hands and the sharp pass of that rune carved metal. 

This is as mechanical and hollow as everything else.

He needs to do it so he can look different. He needs to do it so he can look appealing and there's a curl of nausea at the thought.

When he's finished he runs his hands idly along his mostly smooth jaw line. The short rasp of an unclean shave damning, but he can't do any better by himself and with his hands trembling dangerously. 

It will have to be enough. 

He will fix this. 

He will get better. 

He will kill this thing inside of him.

Even if it takes away a part of himself in the process. 

~~”You do what you have to.”~~

_He will survive._

~~”Whatever the cost.”~~

 

 

 

 

\-----------------------------//--------------------

 

 

 

 

He doesn't give the small blade back.

He keeps it in his pocket. He's not sure why. He thinks maybe a part of him wants Fjord to find it missing. Wants the half orc to draw conclusions, figure out something is wrong, somehow stop him from executing this plan that's settled into his thoughts. 

Another part knows it's a safety net. 

That if everything goes wrong. That if something goes so terribly, horribly, irreversibly wrong, that he has an option to fall back on. It's almost calming to know he can make that decision. He doesn't stop to think about how he can't think like that, that he can't contemplate such an irreversible decision because he has to live. It's hard to think about much beyond a sea of greys and the twisting blacked and ugly things below him anymore anyways. 

He makes sure he's on the cusp of drunk, but still coherent before he tries anything. His brain stuffed with just enough fuzz and warmth that it's all dulled but not enough he won't remember. 

He needs to remember because if he doesn't remember it won't work. 

He knows Molly watches all of them with hooded eyes and a hunger that he keeps at bay. He knows the tiefling would willingly fall into bed with almost all of them if they just asked. 

He counts on it.

He tries to hide the tremor in his hands when he approaches him leaning against the bar.

He smiles, he leans forward, he does everything he's seen, everything he knows, every small tick in that perfectly organized list of how to make someone want you and he tries not to think about the bile pulsing at the back of his throat while he does it. 

The tiefling reciprocates and Caleb won't lie, he knows it's mostly the alcohol he's been continuously shoving into the other’s hands. He knows Molly is perceptive, knows the tiefling isn't stupid, that he'll be able to tell something is wrong and stop and he can't have that happen because he needs it gone at whatever cost. 

It doesn't stop him from being scared. 

The inebriation doesn't stop him from knowing that it'll hurt, that he'll feel pain, that he'll hate every second of it. 

He tells himself it's worth it because at least it won't be satin and tanned skin anymore. 

It'll be something he can reckon with after, something he can hide away easier, something he can blanket the other memories underneath where they can finally die. 

He'll just pretend like it was a one time thing, that it was just the heat of the moment, lie and fib and pretend that he didn't just use the tiefling to erase a diseased and tainted part of himself. 

Molly tracks him with pupiless eyes and he can see the tiefling isn't oblivious to what he's trying to do, at least not to the part he wants him to latch onto. He smiles, he laughs, he makes his own eyes a bit heavier because that's what he knows. He ignores the way his heart is trying to eat through his sternum or the way he feels like his skin might start peeling off at the seams. 

He keeps an eye on the others, he knows they'll try and stop him if they see, that they'll stop Molly, and he can't have them interfering with this. 

He needs this to happen so he can finally get better.

He's at the bottom of a drink and he can't recall the number and it's hard to think straight now. He can still see and hear and feel and he thinks he can probably still remember things the next morning if he stops here. 

Molly is wobbling in his seat beside him and he tries to stand before almost face planting into the counter. Caleb catches him, makes sure that his hands dip a little too low. The tiefling wraps an arm around his shoulders in return, leans into him, against him, and Caleb tries not to fall apart at just that, tries not to flinch and recoil and give anything away. 

He doesn't know if he can do this.

But he needs to. 

He doesn't want to.

~~”Needs outweigh wants.”~~

He all but drags the tiefling up the stairs, the other stumbling and tripping on the steps and laughing under his breath and he reeks like a meadery, but at least he doesn't smell like leather and rot.

He doesn't think any of the others paid much mind to him helping a very drunk Molly up and if they did they probably didn't think much of it.

He doesn't want to do this.

~~”You need to do this.”~~

He pushes the door open with his free shoulder, listens to it latch shut behind them and he wants to collapse and crumble because he's made a terrible awful mistake. 

He wishes the others would stop him.

~~“You must do this.”~~

He doesn't stop to think about what he's doing when he swipes sweet oil across his lip again and whispers and suggests and coerces.

Because he can see that hesitation there, underneath that desire and glazed drunkenness, and he can't have it interfering. 

He _needs_ Molly to do this.

He doesn't want him to though.

~~”You must do what is necessary.”~~

Caleb is tired of feeling sick and weak and broken. 

He needs it to go away and he needs to be in control again. 

He needs control and this is the only way he can think to wrest it back beneath him. 

_He needs control._

~~”This will give it back to you.”~~

There's hands on him and he can't-- he can't remember where he is. 

He thinks he knows those clumsy hands that shuck the road coat from his shoulders and down his arms or the ones that fumble with the clasp of his book holsters until they clatter to the ground with it. 

He thinks he knows them.

But they feel foreign. 

_Nails that dig into the grooved scars of him and rip back the flesh until it weeps red--_

Fingertips that feather over his collarbone and down his sternum and--

_A bruising, crushing grip that encompasses the whole of his collapsible rib cage and--_

Trail up and under his shirt and peel it from him in one slow, languid stroke---

_Sundering the fabric in a ripping tear that eats up the silence---_

A warm palm flat against his chest, gently walking him backwards until the back of his knees hit and---

_Falling into a pool of satin that clings to his sweat and fear slicked skin---_

Someone hovering over him, purple and trailed in moonlight and---

_Crushing him, smothering him in cracked leather skin--_

The heat of them leaves... whoever it is. 

It's cold and he shivers in the absence of it. 

“...Caleb?” 

He blinks and he wonders why he is still half clothed. 

He wonders why he isn't in pain. 

There's something draped over his chest and its light and smoothes over his skin pleasantly with the weight of it. It's colorful and vibrant and shines in the moonlight and it's nothing he can ever remember Lorenzo having. 

“I'll go get someone, hold on.” The voice is a bit slurred, lilting, he can tell they are scared though, that they're trying to hold something in. 

It's quiet for a bit and he rests in the silence. 

There's the stomp of feet on the stairs, clawed feet that click when they walk and he doesn't recognize them because Lorenzo’s gait was as heavy and sure as a predator and these are fast and frightened. They burst through the door and he can't bring himself to look over at them because he's trapped up in the grain of the ceiling. 

“We need to get him off the bed." There's shuffling, someone pulling themselves up onto the sea of sheets next to him and they're far too small to frighten him. 

Hands try to slide underneath him and those aren't the small ones and he panics-- he doesn't want this, not in front of her. 

“--leb! Caleb! Stop! It's us!”

It's hard to think past the liquid poison in his veins.

He thought it would help make this easier, but he feels more out of control than he did before. 

He's on the floor somehow, on the opposite side of those looming figures. There's something bundled to his chest and it bleeds colors as he looks up to them and he can't remember where he is but he knows he can't let them near him. 

One's standing on the bed now, short-- shorter than the rest who have filed in to hover at the other side of the room, only five figures in total and he knows, somewhere in the back of his head, two are missing sea-green colored and sapphire-- 

And he's pressed in between the bed and the wall, peering out at them, and it's safe here. 

There's shouting and arguing. There's the sound of a struggle.

“--didn't mean to--I don’t know what happened, I wouldn't have---” 

“He was fucking _raped_ before, you absolute asshole!” 

The whole room freezes.

He freezes. 

He hasn't heard it out loud before. He didn't think it would hurt so much to hear it said out loud. 

“I know-- I would never---” 

“Wait, I think--' The goblin peers over the bed at him, looking him over. "I think there's oil on his lip.” 

“Woah, woah, woah, so you're saying he used fucking suggestion on Molly?”

“We can't know for sure unless he tells us, but yeah, pretty much.”

“And _why_ would he do that?”

“I don't fucking know, okay?!” And the goblin standing on the bed is shaking now and he wonders what she's so scared of, wonders why she's looking at him like she's seen a ghost… or maybe a devil. 

“Shit... I thought he was getting better...” 

“Me too.” The goblin mumbles, glancing behind her at a tall figure. “Caduceus, did you notice anything before this?” 

“He hasn't been sleeping much at all the past few nights, but that's pretty much his usual honestly. I didn't think anything of it...”

There's footsteps.

“Molly?” The goblin asks over her shoulder.

There's the sound of a door slamming shut and he flinches at the crack of wood.

“Someone fucking go after him, please...” The angry snarling voice that barked earlier is more subdued now, resigned even. 

“I've got him...” 

It opens. 

“Yasha." That same rough voice, framed in tanned skin and cobalt, stops the storm-cloaked figure. "Make sure he doesn't do anything stupid out there.” 

“I'll try." 

It closes again. 

“Caleb?” The goblin is crouched in front of him now, tucked within the safe space in front of him. 

“Why would you do that, Caleb?” She talks like she is coaxing an animal. 

It's soft and familiar and he can't remember if he's in a bedroom or a prison cell or if it's today or months ago. 

“Do what?” 

“Why would you use suggestion on Molly to do that?” 

It takes him a moment to remember who that is. It's jumbled and tangled up in there and he plucks it out from where he's lost it. 

“I need to erase it.” 

“I don't understand,” Her brow is furrowed and there's liquid collecting at the edges of her face and he wonders if it's raining and why he can't feel it on his skin. 

“Caleb, why would you make him do that?” .

He doesn't understand why she doesn't understand. 

His own face crumples and he thinks, tries to pull apart those swathes of grey but they are heavy and thick around him. 

“Cover it up..." he tries-- tries to get her to understand it but he can see she's more confused by the way there's more rain on her cheeks. 

“Nott, I don't think you are gonna get much out of him right now," a scarred and darker skinned hand drops on the goblin's shoulder. 

The goblin sighs, a strained and taut huff of air and Caleb can almost see the tension across her shoulders. She leaves him be and he's only left with her words. 

There's something he latches onto that was among them. Something that doesn't leave him abandoned in the dark. 

‘Why would you make him do that?’ 

‘Make him do that.’

**‘Make him.’**

~~Force him~~. 

He curls into himself.

 

\--------------------------------------//----------------

 

He should have noticed that something was wrong. 

He should have noticed that Caleb was far too quiet, subdued; almost normal these last few days compared to to what he had been before. 

But he was far too caught up in the fact that the wizard was getting better in other ways to see what was happening beneath the surface. 

And now he's here, Beau snarling down his throat and the others are looking at him likes he's a monster and his head is pounding and it's hard to really think straight or say anything to defend himself---

And maybe he shouldn't, because he should have noticed.

Noticed that something was wrong the second the wizard leaned against the bar and looked at him in a way that Molly had never seen before, but his addled brain didn't find unwelcome. 

He should have pushed through the haze, noticed the tension, the trembling, the wide eyes that weren't dilated with desire, but dread. 

 

_He didn't plan on getting sloshed._

_He was just planning on having a couple drinks and turning in for an uneventful night before they continued on their way._

_He hadn't expected a familiar wizard to slot himself into the space next to him at the counter._

_Brain stuttering because he's clean and shaved and Molly hasn't seen either of those circumstances in a while. He thought Pumat would whisk away the dirt like he had done before when they visited, but the firbolg had been harried and distracted, more concerned with their gold than how they looked or who they were._

_And there's another full tankard being pressed into his fingers and he takes it because he needs something to chase away his worry and Caleb is smiling and he's enraptured by it because the other has never looked at him like that before._

_They share idle conversation and a few more drinks that turn into a hard to recall number and Molly's caught up in the fact that the wizard is talking to him and interacting and acting normal that he misses everything else beyond that._

_He tries to stand, but overestimates how well his legs want to work right now. Caleb catches him and his hands are warm, far warmer than he expected. There's a small whisper in the back of his head. Something instinctual. A voice that tells him there is something wrong here. That this all feels off and that he should get back to the others._

_It's hard to stay latched onto that warning, not when the hand supporting his front slides a little too low and sends skitters across the back of his neck._

_He wobbles up the stairs with the other's help, addled thoughts looping, because maybe Caleb wants to talk about the shit that keeps bothering him for once. Maybe he assumes that a drunk Molly is a better listener than a sober one because he'll forget some of it later._

_That's fine. As long as he can help in any way, the semantics don't matter._

_Caleb shoulders the door to a room open that's not theirs and that sharp ring is back. Its shriller now and he narrows his eyes and tries to figure out what it's trying to tell him._

_The door clicks shut and Caleb releases him, almost stepping away far too quickly, like he's been burned. Molly stays near the door because that ringing is even louder now and his brow furrows because he's not sure what the other wants anymore._

_A hand cups his cheek and he's caught up in blues that are very distracting._

_He hesitates, teetering on the edge of doing anything, because even in the warm buzz in his skull he knows something is wrong._

_He misses when the other swipes oil across his bottom lip, but he doesn't miss the words that are whispered and oddly husky and tremoring...sweetly controlling._

__“Sleep with me.”_ _

_And it sounds so logical._

_It makes every amount of sense._

_And there's warmth skittering across his skin and settling in his gut and it's hard to remember why he ever hesitated in the first place._

_Because why wouldn't he?_

_It's hard to remember not having that idea in the first place and he goes along with it._

_It's when he snaps out of it moments later that he's terrified._

_Hands shaking and eyes wide, because he doesn't remember why he's looking down on a half-clothed Caleb and the other’s eyes are vacant and empty and far away-- and what happened?_

_He scrambles away, pulling his still present coat from his shoulders and covering up the trembling wizard with it. Head pounding and nausea so intense he's near to throwing up._

__

 

Molly slams the door with a crack of wood behind him. 

He needs to get away from this for a moment. The wizard used suggest on him for _that_ and Molly can't help but feel betrayed in some way. Even if he shouldn't have let some spell dictate his actions it still hurts and he doesn't understand why Caleb did it. 

A hand catches his wrist just as he's about to turn at the end of the hallway. He whirls around, facing Yasha, feeling as lost as he had that night in the thunderstorm.

“Yasha, you know I wouldn't do that right?” he practically pleads, because she has to understand. 

He wouldn't hurt Caleb like that. He would never hurt anyone like that. 

“I know.”

“Why did he think I would hurt him like that then?”

“Molly…” 

“Why did he try and go through with it even if he didn't want to? Why did he choose _me_ to do that to him?” 

Yasha doesn't say anything back, her eyes pinched and Molly doesn't try to break her grip on him. He thinks if she lets him go right now he might try and leave. 

“Did I..? Am I…?" Molly stutters, glancing down, searching the floor for answers he won't find. "Is that what he thinks of me, Yasha? That I just take whatever I want..that I'll just go along with anything? That I'll just sleep with anyone if they have a pulse?” He cant help it sounding so troubled and broken; because what if that is what he thinks of him?

Yasha frowns, dropping his arm, instead placing a hand on his shoulder that he rests his own over. 

“Molly he's not innocent in this,” She starts, her voice hard. “He used magic on you… I don't know why. I can't say what he was thinking or if he was thinking clearly at all, but it doesn't excuse the fact that it happened.”

“But why me?” He doesn't look up at her when he asks it, caught up in the floorboards and the fact that he almost did something he wouldn't have ever been able to take back. 

“You'd have to ask him.” 

“You know I'm not like that, right?” 

He's not.

It's not just _anyone_. 

He's not… he would never hurt someone like that. 

“I know, Molly.” 

 

 

 

\------------------------------------//---------------------------

 

 

__

_There's a field of chaotic black stretched out before him._

_There's the flicker of things at his non existent peripherals and when he turns his head they vanish into more receding midnight. There's whispers and shouts, whimpers and cries and he doesn't understand if they are his or someone else's and they don't stop to let him contemplate. They just crescendo until he thinks his ears might be bleeding, until his brain feels like soup in his skull and----_

_“Me and you... we're the same, you know?” The bassy rumble brushes across the shell of his ear, phantom fingers dragging along his jaw and he recoils, spinning around to face it, but there's nothing there._

_“No." He bites it out because _no,_ he doesn't want to deal with this, whatever this twisting nightmare is._

_He can say no now, he can refuse and deny and make him go away._

_The phantom doesn't leave however, it lingers and there's only silence around him now._

_“I force your hand, you force your friend’s hand, it's all semantics really.”_

_“I did not--”_

_“But you did, didn't you?” Lorenzo purrs, satisfied and smug, hot against the shell of his ear._

_Caleb shakes his head._

_“You forced him to hurt you.” Lorenzo steps from the dark, a devil vacant of horns but flickering, immaterial, and far too tangible. “You took away his choice where I at least gave you the option to refuse.”_

_And he had._

_He had and Caleb hadn't and he thinks that might make him the monster here._

_The devil in his own head, among the flies and the rot._

_Lorenzo smiles. “That makes you worse than me, doesn't it?”_

_No. He's not--- He's not a ra--- He wouldn't----_

_But he had._

_“Isn't that how this works? I tell you all the ways you're shittier than me and then you internalize it, right?” Lorenzo taps his temple, grinning wider, all gold and sharp._

_Caleb wants to leave._

_He doesn't want to be in his own head._

_He doesn't like his dreams, he doesn't like his thoughts, he doesn't like the things writhing in the shadowy parts of him._

So why won't Lorenzo leave him alone?

_“I killed you...” he says, listlessly, lifelessly, like he knows he didn't._

_Lorenzo laughs and its echoing and rumbling and Caleb feels like he's underneath it again as the nightmare drags him forward and snarls in his face._

__“You can't kill me.”_ The skin is charring off of his bones, slumping into ash and embers and there's something underneath it. _

_Someone shorter than Lorenzo._

_Paler, thinner, their face drawn, eyes sunken, a collar around their neck. Their eyes an endless, solemn blue and frame draped in red, glittering, bloody satin. Looking right at him, right through him and----_

__

He wakes up and there's someone hovering at the foot of his pitiful tangle of blankets. He shoots up, scrambling back and all he sees is satin and red-- 

“Woah, woah, woah, easy.” 

He stops, staring wide-eyed at the lavender hand, the inked skin, the scar littered arm its attached to.

“It's just me." Molly soothes, crouching slowly, holding his hands up where Caleb can see them and he eyes them warily. Eyes all of it warily and with a sharp curl of guilt that burrows in his gut. 

“I just wanted to talk…” Molly continues. 

Caleb says nothing, but he doesn't tell him to leave He's already controlled him once and he doesn't deserve to do it again. 

“Is it okay if I sit?” 

Caleb doesn't answer.

He remembers the tiefling pinning him to a wall the first time they came to Zadash, explaining why he had fucked things up, to be more careful about pilfering gold from the party-- and Caleb hadn't understand Molly's ire at the time and he's wary of what truly justified anger might lead to besides a talking to. 

He knows these people would never hurt him. But he's starting to question that the more he hurts them. 

Molly just settles against the side of the bed frame, not looking at him, but at the window and the moons outside. “Yasha said you might not have been thinking clearly… is that true?” 

Sure. Whatever he wants to think. Caleb doesn't care anymore, its hard to care about a lot of things anymore and he doesn't want to be faced with this aftermath right now. 

“Yes.” 

Molly purses his lips, facial features drawing down. “That wasn't a very convincing lie.” 

Caleb grits his teeth. 

“Look , I won't sit here and ask you to pick your brain apart for an explanation,” Molly sighs, glancing over at him, “Just… don't do that again. If it ever comes down to it and you really feel that way and all of this is done... and you aren't still fighting with whatever is stuck up in that head of yours, then come to me. But don't do that _ever_ again.” 

Caleb has nothing to say in response. He knows that Molly thinks he's broken in his own head, that he's not worth anything right now, to any of them, because he can't work his way through the simplest procedures without panicking.

Like eating or bathing or sex. 

The tiefling leverages himself up after a moment, turns, and leaves. 

If they won't help him he'll just find another way. 

 

 

\--------------------------------

 

 

The idea is still there and it scares him. 

That even after that disaster it's still there and it won't leave.

He tries to think about it more and just imagining the crawl of fingers across him sends his thoughts skittering. 

He doesn't want any of that. 

But he has to prove that he's fine. 

To himself and them.

And if none of them will do it he has to look elsewhere. 

He avoids it. Avoids that thing in the back of his head like he avoids everything else. He avoids it because they are set back a few days on leaving, they are still in Zadash, and he has time to think about all of it before they are on the open road again. 

He tries to find things that help him not think about it at night. 

He goes through the contents of the haversack in the witching hours one night. He searches for that thing he knows might be in there. Remembers that bottle of fine blue-grey dust, he isn't sure what exactly it does but it does _something_ , and he needs something to distract him from the idea in his head. 

He finds it, clings onto it like a lifeline and retreats back to his own room. 

He can't help the guilty curl of heat across the back of his neck because he said he wouldn't steal from these people. But he needs it. So he needs to steal it. And he takes it for himself because they don't even remember it exists and he does. 

He thought it would make him numb or feel lethargic but instead it is a myriad of drifting ethereal creatures and wavering mist and drops of drifting ash and he stares at his hands among them. 

He doesn't expect the side effects. 

Beau and Molly had been able to walk and talk when they used it, but he's stuck, curled up on his side and none of them the wiser to the way he can't move and it feels like his skin is boiling off. 

But at least he isn't thinking about anything else besides the strange world around him and the pain. 

After that experience he decides to stick to alcohol. 

That's at least familiar and safe and he can deal with the effects of it far easier and it's simpler to access and use around them. 

But soon he won't have it and he'll be stuck with them on the road where he can't hide as easily. Where it's harder to pretend and harder to sleep and he's trying to work on a new spell that will help with that, but it's hard to concentrate on spells and his spellbooks when a part of him doesn't even care about those things anymore. 

He's become obsessed with whatever is in his head. 

He contemplates finding a herbalist shop. 

Contemplates pawing over as much gold as he can for something that will make him forget, something they may not deal over the counter, but under it with sharp smiles and pity. 

He doesn't do that because addiction is not something he wants. 

So he sits with the find familiar spell, stares at the page, the circle of symbols, the charcoal, the incense, the gold and he thinks he should just do it. Just bring him back, because Frumpkin makes things easier, but Frumpkin will also know. 

He is not an unintelligent beast. He is a fey creature trapped in a temporary vessel that he for all intents and purposes conjures for it to reside in. He would look at him and know. And he doesn't need his cat looking at him like that either. 

So he's left with little options and a slowly waning ability to don that mask that makes the others ignore him. 

He can feel it cracking as time goes on. 

Every hour ticking into agony as he jokes through nausea, muddles his way through a racing heart or cold sweats or the way he's started seeing figures in the corner of the room that aren't there but smile and their mouth is filled with sharpened gold. 

He imagines having a stranger do it. 

And he nearly loses the meager contents of his stomach, heaving and shivering on the floor of the room where no one can see him. 

He can't. 

That he can't do. And he knows he's weak for it. That it's just a simple trade of flesh and power. That he should be able to just hand himself over so he can fix this thing in him, but he can't. 

There's a fear there. Of the unknown. Because he won't know that person's intent. He won't know if that person wants to hurt him or not. Hurt him more than he would allow to get this thing out of him at least. Because he won't pretend like it won't hurt or he won't hate it either way, because he doesn't want to do it but he _needs_ to. 

He needs to do something. 

 

 

 

\-------------------

 

 

 

He starts to take small things from them. 

Things he knows they won't notice, but a part of him hopes they will. He's not sure why, he can't figure out the origin of it. Not when he's pocketing a broken off end of Beau's eyeliner, or a length of ribbon, or a ring, or some coins, or just really anything they leave around and idle and unattended. He wonders if this is what Nott feels like, if she takes because she's trying to accomplish something or if it's just second nature. 

If they notice he's stealing maybe they'll confront him like they've done before. Maybe they'll stop him. Maybe they'll notice he's drowning even when he pretends like he isn't as he tries to drown himself even further in the bottom of a glass in front of them. Smiles at them while his pockets are stuffed with things he's taken from each of them, but they still haven't noticed missing yet. 

He doesn't know if he wants them to, but he's scared. He's terrified and he's alone because he's managed to push them all away with his actions even if they are sitting right across from him. 

He can tell they are wary of him, that they aren't sure what he might do. 

He's not even sure of what he might do either. 

His resolve cracks when even alcohol doesn't work anymore and it only seems to make it worse now. He feels more anxious, sees more things that he's sure aren't there but they terrify him, and their smiles start to slip into concerned frowns around him and he can't have that. 

They are supposed to leave in two days. 

And he still hasn't fixed it. 

And he needs to, and he will, but first he needs something, something to distract him, just for a bit. 

It's only for a bit. 

He knows things like that exist. 

He's seen that glazed euphoric glean in a man's eyes before and he knows it's artificial but he _wants it._

He waits until they are all asleep.

Waits until he can hear the metronomic breath of each of them in the room. He only has to really worry about Caduceus anyways. He is the quickest to notice the slightest thing after all. 

He leaves the coat behind, hopes if they see it they won't look too much harder and will assume he's curled somewhere among the blankets. 

He slips out the door and down into the tavern and it's dark and cold and abandoned where it is usually lively and filled. He thinks about stopping, about going back and abandoning this, but his feet are practically moving without him. 

The streets are quiet. 

The sky is clear and the moons are glaring down at him like two mismatched eyes and he ignores their silent judgement. 

He makes his way out of the nicer districts, into those places the city tries to hide and shove behind nicer facades. The part that all cities have. The part that is always alive, even during the witching hour. 

There's people huddled in blankets and makeshift shelters and shored up against walls and he still remembers what it's like to have nothing. 

There are no guards here. 

And it's dimly lit. The streets are not bathed in the low burning lights lining the more occupied parts of the city. Only moonlight illuminates this place and casts it into tinges of faint silver and deep blues that skitter along the ground. 

He searches, scours the nearly empty roads for it until he finds it, ensconced and tucked away into an alley. The sign nearly hanging off the chain and scrawled with a simple word in black ink.

‘Herbalist’

Bereft of the charm and pomp of the shops in the inner city, this storefront is dingy and tilted and everything but opulent. 

It's exactly what he is looking for. 

He pushes past that decrepit threshold and the man inside instantly perks up at the sight of him. Caleb wishes he had brought his coat with him when the others eyes rake over him, lingering on him for far too long. 

“Never seen you ‘round here before,” His voice is rough and heavy, unlike the smooth dulcets he had been expecting from someone with elven blood.

“I'm new to these parts,” Caleb makes sure to thicken his accent, hiding beneath the guise of a newcomer and foreigner.

The half-elf's eyes practically light up at the sound of it, lips tilting and fingers drumming on the counter, something eager in the way he tilts his head, “Welcome to Zadash then.” 

“Danke,” Caleb reaches the counter, inspecting the shelves behind the sandy haired man with a cursory glance, avoiding the others eyes and the way they keep tracking over his face and the rest of him. 

“What brings you to the shitty side of town if I might ask?” 

“Expenses and prospects.” 

“This city is bloody draining, aint it. Take every scrap of coin if you let it, s'why I have my establishment out here, where they can't bleed me for taxes or choke me with rules,” the half elf complains, settling against the counter, propping his chin on his hand and grinning. 

Caleb says nothing, uncomfortable and feeling exposed without that second skin he usually wears. The dirt and the coat keep him hidden but he has neither right now and he doesn't like the way this half-elf is watching him. 

“So, is it safe to assume you're here for something you can't find in the inner city?” 

“Ja.” 

“Anything in particular?” 

“I need something that is numbing, but isn't noticeable.” He gestures to his eyes, knowing that dilated pupils would be a dead giveaway to the others. 

“Ah, you one of those types? Need it to get through the work day or somethin’?” The half-elf asks, looking him up and down.

“Sure,” Caleb agrees, trying to keep that building unease out of his voice.

He's not sure what this man thinks his job is, but whatever gets him out of this place faster. 

“I got whatcha need, one sec.” 

The man takes a moment to rummage around the shelves behind him. They're meagerly stocked, mostly empty space and the occasional small closed chest or pouch scattered among them. 

“There it is,” The half-elf mutters, standing back up with a red velvet pouch in his hand, it's about the size of his palm and it sifts like sand. 

“This'll get you about three weeks worth of doses. Every twelve hours or so. Effects are most potent during the peak in the middle though and there's no major physical indicators when you take it. Just makes things fuzzy for ya, which I assume is what you're looking for?” 

Caleb nods, fiddling with the pouch of coins in his pocket, “What's it called?” 

“Ain't really a name for it yet, not officially. It's kind of a new thing. Not exactly meant for recreational use, it's more like something someone might use to keep someone numb and compliant, you know? Like a bit spaced out in their own head, but not brain dead or drooling. And--” 

That's all he needs. It makes it all numb and that's all he needs. 

“I will take it.” 

“Woah there, pal, have you ever used this shit before?”

“No," Caleb grits out, eyes narrowing. 

“That's what I thought so let me finish,” The man sneers and Caleb doesn't appreciate the way the other is looking down on him but he can't snap at him for it, he needs that bag. 

“It's taken by mouth, don't need to mix it with nothing or prep it just put the powder on your gums and your good to go. But be careful, it's unbelievably addictive and the side effects can be brutal. Mostly mental shit, but some people shake and sweat a bit towards the end of a dose.” 

He's not stupid. 

He won't let it control him. 

“I'll be careful.” 

“Whatever you say,” the man says skeptically, holding out a hand, “Now that'll be a hundred gold.”

“Eighty.”

The man eyes him up and down and he's seen that look before and that sharp smile. 

“Not unless you can make it worthwhile.” 

No. 

He won't do that. 

He's not that desperate. 

“One hundred then,” He goes to fork over the precious metal, but he notices the look on the man's face. 

There's disappointment in the other's eyes, like he wanted Caleb to accept the offer. Like he expected him to. 

“Fine, fine, how's about I make it seventy gold and you do me a little favor,” the man crosses his arms, smirking. 

Caleb grits his teeth. 

He wants that fucking bag, but he doesn't want to do whatever this man has in mind. 

“No,” he says firmly, “I'll just pay the hundred.”

The man's eye twitches, his lip curling slightly and there's something hard in those putrice blues now. 

“Mm, you know what?” The man palms the velvet pouch he had been extending, crossing his arms and raising a brow. “Nope.”

Caleb barely resists the urge to just snatch it out of the man's hand.

“What do you mean no? I am willing to pay you.” 

“I don't want your gold no more." The man's eyes are pinched and annoyed but his smile is lecherous and tight and he's looking at Caleb like his rejection earlier was merely an amusing inconvenience and an aggravating annoyance. 

“But--”

“With a face like that I'm sure you can think of other ways to pay for it.”

Caleb recoils, taking a step back, gaze darting everywhere but that darkened look in the other's eyes. 

“I am not a--” 

The man grabs his wrist, holding him in place and Caleb realizes he's made a terrible, awful mistake thinking he could trust the people here. 

“Come on. I'm not asking for much. You can get your drugs and keep your gold. I thinks it's a win, win for both of us,” He purrs and he smells like cheap alcohol and tobacco and he's much too close now. 

“I don't--” 

The grip tightens and his nerves are skittering and thoughts tumbling and crashing into one another in his head and he wants to leave.

He doesn't want to be here anymore. 

He made a mistake coming here. 

“What're you so ‘fraid of, sweetheart? I don't give out deals like this often. Just to the pretty ones,” A hand brushes a stray lock behind his ear and Caleb recoils, but the grip on his wrist holds fast. 

“N--nein..." Caleb stutters out and he's trying to grab a hold of that fire beneath his skin, but he's locked in place and he can't get his limbs to move how he wants them to or his thoughts to assemble themselves into a coherent order. 

The man tilts his head, frowning, “Think you're too good for me or somethin’?” 

“Nein, I just--” He pulls harder, heart skittering at the now bruising hold on his wrist and it's hard to remember if it's cracked and tanned skin holding him or pale and sickly, “ _Bitte_ , I don't--” 

And he realizes it's dark, that there's no one else around and that he is utterly, terribly, and awfully alone. 

“I don't think you understand,” He's dragged forward and he's even closer to the other now and he wants to burn him, turn him to ash, he wants to, but he can't, he can't get his lips to work and he's alone and there's no one here and he should have never come here, “I'm no longer asking.” 

He can't, he can't let it happen again and his wrist is caught and he can't use the spell he wants to but he can still use one in particular. 

“Hey what're you--?” The man starts but is too slow to stop Caleb from grabbing the few spell components on his person. 

He quickly smears the bit of eyeliner he stole from Beauregard on his cheek, mutters a quick phrase and starts talking. 

“Let me go.” 

The man's eyes have gone a bit fuzzy and he smiles at Caleb, relinquishing his grip and nodding.

He only has a minute.

He needs to get away now, but he still wants that bag. 

“Hand it over.” 

The man's brow furrows and he looks between the pouch and Caleb and that influence settled over him wavers, but it sticks because he's relinquishing it with a dopey grin. 

Caleb snatches it out of the other's palm and takes a step back, eyeing him warily. 

“Leave.” 

The man nods, and starts to make his way out the door. 

Caleb watches him until he's satisfied the other is indeed leaving and he inches the small velvet pouch open, checks the contents and considers how he should have just done this in the first place. 

He's curious if there's more of this to find and he doesn't want to ever come back to this place to get more.

He rummages through the man's abandoned storefront, counting down the rest of the time limit in his head, nervously ticking off each second as he searches. 

_Fifteen_. 

Dried leaves. Incense that he pockets. 

_Fourteen_. 

Dirty rags. Tattered clothes.

_Thirteen_. 

Mystery fungus. Crushed herbs.

_Twelve_. 

An empty flask. A woman's shoe.

_Eleven_. 

A meager health potion which he quickly palms and slips into his pocket as well. 

_Ten_. 

He finds everything but what he's really looking for and it's frustrating because he was hoping to gather enough to last him until he made it to to the coast, but he can't find it and he's almost out of time. 

He turns to leave and he has less than ten seconds left to get as far away from wherever the other went as possible before he turns hostile. 

He's almost out of the seedy alleyway and back into the moonlit streets. Freedom is inches away and he barely rounds the corner when something slams into the side of his temple and he stumbles backwards and into the yawning dark behind him. 

“What the fuck did you do to me?!”

And he's backing away, blinking out the spots of blinking lights and swimming color, clutching the side of his head where blood is trickling down and staining his skin red. 

There's double in his vision, the angry visage of a familiar figure is looming before him, a stained hunk of scrap wood in his fist and he's snarling at Caleb now. 

“You one of them magic users, huh? Think you can just get away with stealing my shit?” 

Caleb raises his hands, thumbs touching, fanning his fingers and pulling that fire to the surface, but the other moves quicker than his sluggish and disoriented lips. The wood cracks into his spread hands and he yelps, the man pushing his way through the swing and barreling into him, taking him down with him until he's straddling him. 

Caleb shoves at the plank held at his throat, chokes out a cough when it's shoved down harder and he thrashes under the other because he can't let this happen again. 

The other leers over him, practically frothing at the mouth now and Caleb reaches with one searching hand for the spell components at his hip. Scrabbles for them desperately but the man only bats his hand away, tearing the leather pouch off with one pull and tosses it down into the dark. 

“I'll show you want the fuck happens to whores who think they can steal from me.” 

It's hard to breathe now and he's turned to pushing at the immovable object trapping the air from reaching his lungs, claws at the wood and tries to gasp in what bits of air he can. 

There's a hand fumbling at his belt now and he can't, he can't, _he can't---_

There's fire eating up the man's chest, tearing across his clothes and skin and hair and he's screaming, igniting into an inferno of fat and muscle and sinew and he's burning Caleb where he's grabbed his wrist. There's ash and charcoal in his lungs and he gasps and shudders under the burning half elf, tears that searing grip off of him and scrambles out from under the dripping waxy skin and charring strips. 

He watches him burn and feels nothing. 

There is no phantom echoes of his parents screaming. 

He feels empty. 

He clutches that pouch in limp fingers, the one that all of this was for and he isn't sure if what was worth it in anymore. 

His throat hurts, his wrist burns, and he can still feel where the other had straddled across him like a firebrand across his hips and thighs. 

He wants to coat himself in dirt and mud and whatever he can find because he hated the way that man had looked at him and saw something weak, something he could take advantage of. 

Something pretty and breakable and small.

He needs to leave this place, he needs to get back to where he knows people won't look at him like that, but he can't move, because if he leaves this small pocket of darkness someone else might see him, might think because he is clean and shiny and groomed that he is something they can take and touch and make theirs. 

He wonders what's so wrong with him that he attracts that kind of attention from these strangers with glints of hunger in their eyes and their searching deadened fingers. 

~~”You were made to serve beneath someone.”~~

He shakes his head. 

He hates that voice that won't leave him alone.

It's why he has this now.

These things that will chase it away and make things easier. 

And if these don't work he only has one more option. 

~~Two if he considers the razor in his pocket.~~

 

 

\------------------

 

 

 

He slinks back into that dimly illuminated interior of the tavern and inn, the shadows tall and long and dark. He makes it halfway to the stairs when there's a voice behind him. 

 

“Caleb, where did you go?”

He turns and Molly is there, having gotten up from one of the tables that was cast in a darkened absence of light. The tiefling tilts his head at him, levels him with a knowing look that has Caleb grinding his teeth. 

“Nowhere.” 

There's ash dusting his front and on his fingertips and in his hair. He knows his throat is probably a bruised mess and there's a burn mark on his wrist and he knows Molly doesn't miss any of it. 

“Why are you lying?” The tiefling steps forward and Caleb steps back, nerves jumping. 

“Why does it matter?” 

Molly frowns and approaches him and Caleb freezes, hands clenched and nails biting into his palms. 

“What were you doing out there?” Molly stops in front of him, hands on his hips and eyes searching. 

“Looking for something,” he breathes out, wrung out and exhausted.

But he doesn't miss that flicker in Molly's eyes at the sound of it. The airy and desperate way he uttered it. Seemingly as swaying as when he's not covered in dirt and finally clean shaven. 

There's a power to it. 

Knowing he has some kind of hand in how the other looks at him. 

Some kind of control. 

It's illogical, it makes no sense, it scares him, but a part of him knows that he's the one that did that and it wants more. But he's terrified of that thing, that thing that wants control in the worst ways. 

Just like he craves the bottom of a tankard or something to numb his head. 

They're all bad for him. 

He knows in the end it will all hurt him.

The drinks, the drugs, but he is the one to make the decision to do it, he can have sway over it. 

He makes the choice. No one else. 

He can control all of it, even if it ends up killing him. 

“And did you find it?” Molly asks, cocking his head.

“Not yet.” 

Because he hasn't taken any yet, he's not sure if it will work. 

He needs it to. 

Molly sighs at that, hands flexing at his sides.

“I know what a desperate man looks like. And I know what it looks like when someone doesn't want to find the thing they're looking for.”

“Do you?”

“I do,” Molly affirms, eyes hard. 

“And what will you do about it?” Caleb asks, shifting a step back. 

“Nothing."

And Caleb is confused by that but not surprised.

“I can't stop you. You'll find a way to get what you want anyways, you're very stubborn like that, but I can warn you,” He sighs, rubbing at his cheek, eyes flickering back up to him and they're sad and pained, “Don't go down this path, Caleb.”

“And what path is that?” He asks, lip curled, because he doesn't want to be talked down to, not by any of them. 

“Self destruction.”

The anger twists into shame. He's not… He's not doing that. He's just controlling it. He's fine. 

“I'm not--” He starts, losing his breath and having to restart because he's not, he's fine, “I am just… it makes it easier.” 

“But it doesn't in the long run. “

“How would you know?” 

“I don't.” 

Caleb sneers. 

“I don't and I won't pretend I do, but I know whatever you're about to do, whatever is in in your pocket, it won't cure you, Caleb. It'll just make things worse.”

“And what do you want me to do about it?” 

“You could hand it over, go to bed, and wake up tomorrow and continue on like this never happened.”

He can't do that. 

“You are good at that aren't you? _Forgetting_. Shoving your past away like it means nothing. Not all of us have that unique luxury.”

“I'm not telling you to forget anything. I'm just telling you not to cover it up.” Molly steps forward, teeth grit and bared and closing the gap between them.

Caleb watches him, stuck nearly at the foot of the steps. 

“Because it will _always_ find a way back to you no matter what. No matter how many drinks, drugs, or people you fuck with to make it go away. It's all only temporary,” Molly brushes by him and Caleb hadn't expected that, his heeled boots loud against the floor in the silence of the abandoned tavern. 

“Those things in your head, those things you try to bury, those are permanent and you have to reckon with them eventually,” Molly continues and he tracks the tiefling, turns to face him, keeping his back away from the other. 

Caleb narrows his eyes when Molly twists on his heel at the base of the first step instead of going up them like he had hoped. 

“Even if you don't want to. Even if it hurts in every possible way you can fathom. Even if it terrifies you, Caleb,” Molly finishes, lips pressed into a hard, determined line and arms crossed.

Molly's inserted himself between him and the flight of stairs, red eyes narrowed back at him. 

He wonders what's changed from this Molly to the one that told him to drink after his episode in the mines beneath Allfield. 

The Molly that said 'Mr. Caleb' and not his name with such shaking sincerity and fear. The one that held him at arm's length and he the same because that was safe. Because getting attached was dangerous.

He almost misses that devil's advocate because at least that version of Molly didn't judge his decisions like this.

“I do not want to though. I never wanted any of this. I never asked for any of this. I just want it gone…”

“I know you do.”

He doesn't like that tone of voice.

That soft acceptance in it. 

He wants to tear it out of Molly and watch it bleed red where it can't grate against his nerves and make him feel small and stupid.

“Do not pity me.” 

Molly flinches at that and there's something satisfying about that… a part of Caleb is terrified by the thrill of it. 

“I'm not.” 

“Don't lie to me. I know what pity looks like. I know you all think I am just some fucking broken _Stück Scheiße_.” 

He goes to push past him, but something seizes his wrist as his foot hits the first step and he turns a grimace to the tiefling, pulling against the grip, but Molly doesn't let go. 

There's a hardness in his eyes that stings like disappointment.

“No, we don't, Caleb. It's not pity. We're scared, we're frustrated, and we're watching you nosedive and all we can do is sit on our asses and watch it happen because you won't let us help you.”

There's a fire leaping under his skin, calling for something to burn and he's afraid it might take what it wants too. 

“Let go of me,” he bites out, pulling harder. 

Molly doesn't let go and those flames only roar louder in his head. 

“Don't do this, Caleb...” 

The tiefling is practically begging and that thing in him leaps at the sound of it. Lunges, teeth bared and lips pulled back in a slobbering snarl because it wants more. But he's afraid of that thing. That dangerous hungry thing in his head that wants what it wants so he holds it back. 

“Let. Go. Of. Me. Mollymauk,” He grits out, head stuffed with flickering red. 

The fingers release him and he stumbles back, clutching his freed wrist and staring at the other, hunched into himself and resisting the urge to grimace.

Molly let him go, but that fire stayed beneath his skin and it wants to burn and eat, but there's nothing for it to devour. 

“I won't tell the others… but if they find out on their own I won't lie to them.” 

Caleb knows it's all born out of some misplaced guilt and he takes advantage of that, latches onto it eagerly, greedily. 

_“Danke.”_ He bites out, hurrying past the tiefling and ascending the steps. 

“Don't thank me for this,” Molly mutters, stuck at the base of the stairs.

Caleb leaves him there.

Leaves his advice and his warnings down there with him too. 

Locks himself in an empty bathing room and rubs a powder on his gums that makes everything go away for awhile. 

 

 

\------

 

He comes back down the next day around dinner time, head stuffed to full with nothing and it's a unique sensation. 

But not an unwelcome one. 

Molly eyes him from their table, frowning and Caleb knows he's looking for all of those classic indications that he's under the influence of something. 

He knows the tiefling can't pinpoint any for sure when he frowns even further and Caleb watches that bleeding frustration, rapt in the others fear of the unknown and the uncertainty. 

He settles down at the table, none of the earlier fears of the open space and the unknown people around them biting at him and it's pleasant.

It's normal. 

None of them seem to notice anything different, only Molly eyeing him occasionally as the others chatter. Caduceus looks confused, likes he's trying to figure something out but seems to give up after a moment, attention caught up by something else. 

“Drinking contest!” Beau suddenly shouts and points at Nott, perched on her chair, “You. Me. Rematch. Let's go!” 

“You're fucking on!”

“Oh, this should be good." Molly smirks, turning from where he's been staring at him, crossing his arms and settling back into his chair. 

Caleb is glad to have the scrutiny off of him at least. 

“Please, don't make a mess of this place,” Fjord laments, glancing at the two of them sternly.

“My money is on Nott!” 

“What the hell, Jester!?” 

“Detectives stick together,” Jester fist bumps Nott and the two grin at each other. 

“I'll put five gold on Beau,” Fjord mutters reluctantly, trying to make the monk feel better. 

“I don't need your pity gold, Mr. Seaman.” 

Fjord's eye twitches at the nickname.

“Okay, you know what, five gold on Nott then.” 

“Wha--?” 

Molly laughs, slapping the table with an open palm, “ I've never seen someone lose a bet in their favor so bloody quickly before!” 

“Shut up, Molly!” 

“Five gold on Beau,” he manages to say and it's strange. 

His tongue feels like its not connected to him but it still obeys. 

Beau's head snaps over to him like she hadn't expected him to talk. She recovers quickly, however, crossing her arms and smirking smugly at Nott. 

“See, your boy thinks I'll win, so you should just give u--” 

“Even if I know I'll lose it in the end,” Caleb finishes and Beau gapes at him. 

This is all so much easier when he feels like he's floating. 

“Okay, first of all, _rude_." 

“I do not see how factual information is rude.” 

“Ha, he's got you there!” Molly jabs his finger at the monk and descends into more cackling laughter, drink spilling from the edges of his tankard and seeming to have forgotten his previous worry with continued imbibements.

Beau flips him off, lip curling, but Caleb can see she's more amused than actually angry. 

“Let's just do this thing and if I win all of your money is mine, motherfuckers,” She points at each of them, eyes narrowed. 

“You can't beat me!” Nott is standing on her chair now and Fjord is looking around nervously like the tavern keeper will descend on them at any moment to tell them to quiet down. 

“Watch me!” 

“Guys, maybe simmer down a bi--” 

“Ten rounds over here, barkeep!” Molly shouts, throwing up a hand eagerly, cutting off Fjord. 

The half-orc seems to give up on controlling the situation, burying his face in his hands and sighing loudly. Jester pats him on the back, but she's beaming from ear to ear and watching as the bar hand brings over a round of drinks. 

It's all very familiar and he sinks into it, everything suspended and more colorful and meaningful than it should ever be.

And he feels fine. 

For once he feels normal. 

He feels like he can keep it under control and the thing in his pocket is a heavy reminder that it won't last, but it's okay, he has more doses and by time he runs out he'll be fine. 

It will have all gone away by then. 

He knows it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For all of you who've just now read this or have been here since the beginning or anything in between I love all of you. I can't thank you enough for clicking on my story and getting this far. I know this is some heavy stuff. And it's not happy or nice or fluffy by any means and you could have read literally anything else, but you read this and just thank you from the bottom of my sloppy, stupid heart. Every kudos and comment means the world and the personal comments, the ones that say I've provided some kind of catharsis in some way, that I've done something almost meaningful with this story, something that I never anticipated or expected, thank you. Thank you a thousand times. I can't thank you enough. There are not enough words to express my gratitude and this is my shitty love letter to all of you. 
> 
> Thank you <3 
> 
>  
> 
> \-----------
> 
> Friends is not that powerful of a spell but also plot armor. 
> 
> Also I'll just keep Caleb's sexuality ambiguous/up in the air for the most part since I don't know what it is. is he ace, bi, straight, etc, who knows, cause I sure don't. Also he's kind of,,,, not okay so it doesn't even matter at this point in the story.


	16. Precipice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings:  
> -Drug Abuse  
> -Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con scenarios from Unreliable Narrator POV  
> -Implied/Referenced Self-harm  
> -Implied/Referenced Withdrawal

It creeps in slowly. 

Those things that might not be real. They dance in the corners of his vision, shadowy images that disappear when he turns his head. 

And it's fine.

Because they go away, they don't linger, the numbing swirl is still there and it's easier to do a lot of things again. That idea is gone too, shoved to the back of that twisting grey, lost to each new high he pushes past his lips and smears across his gums in the dark. 

He doesn't need it, he's not addicted. 

He's fine. 

Even if his skin itches and he picks at those scabs on his wrists. Even if he wonders why his back is slick with a chilling sweat when he goes a little too long between each dose. 

He's fine--

But it's strange. Sometimes he doesn't remember why he does something. 

There might be a suggestion or a hint, an idle phrase that sounds like a direction and he feels himself numbly following it. It's harmless though. Just small things; a playfully remarked shut up, a ‘hey you should get another round’ offered to the table, a question directed at him-- and he follows them mindlessly, nearly mechanically. It's hard to think around the muffled cotton stuffed in his skull, and his limbs and lips move without him sometimes. 

He doesn't even really worry when he starts to lose time. Hours bleed and melt into one and he'll blink and suddenly he's somewhere else and it's nighttime. He knows he should be worried, but it's hard to be worried when all he needs is that warm skitter and the blanketing emptimess. All he really wants is that same blissful nothing and so, he chases after it. 

“I'm glad you're doing better,” Nott says across from him, days into this new routine he's started.

“Me too." He says with an easy smile. 

He tries not to look at the figure looming behind her. At the gold in its teeth or the knife it holds to her throat. At the red spilling from the stump on her left hand and twisting into curtains of satin across the table that inch towards him and flicker into hungry flames. He's sure it's not real, not wjen none of the others react to it-- to Lorenzo standing there, as alive as the day he was killed-- 

“Me too…” he mutters again, looking up to flinty obsidian framed by flame eaten skin. 

He can practically feel Molly eyeing him from the other side of the table too. He doesn't look over there, last time he did, all he saw was dead eyes and a bleeding sternum anyways. 

 

\-----------

 

That numb doesn't last. 

And that idea doesn't stay away. 

That compulsion bubbles up from beneath the surface, latches into his skin even harder than it did before, teeth sharp and pulsing with a venom that makes him feel sick and weak. 

Molly wasn't lying and a part of Caleb had known the tiefling was right, but he had hoped. He had hoped with everything that it would work, that he wouldn't have to deal with this anymore, but it fizzles out, it gets worse. 

And there's a set back. 

They are far behind schedule to meet up with that cloven crystal pick up on the coast, and to make matters worse Nott has landed herself in the jail here and it's far more guarded and sterner than the one in Trostenwald. 

And somehow, without Nott there, it's all gotten even worse. 

And Fjord is trying his best to negotiate a deal, but he thinks it might take a week or more and Caleb doesn't know if he'll make it a week. 

His skin itches, his eyes burn constantly, and he's not sure if it's the continuing lack of sleep or the shit he's putting in his body anymore. 

And he keeps seeing things-- seeing _him_ , standing around the others, touching them, threatening them. Caleb doesn't know if he's real, but every time he makes eye contact with that buzzing image, gnats scattering from behind him, the flash of gold teeth sends him hunching and hiding away from that deadened obsidian and blood stained fingers.

Molly watches him constantly, eyeing him out of the corner of his eyes even when Caleb acts like nothing is wrong around the others, and the constant vigilance is starting to grate at his nerves. 

And he's desperate. 

He thought he was desperate before, but now it's a constant growing fire in his head and he doesn't know how to put it out anymore. He's tried everything he can think of to snuff it out, but something in him is still latched onto that idea and it _wants._

It wants so badly that it hurts and burns and tears at his thoughts. He wants-- he needs something, but he won't give a name to it. It feels like he wants control but everything in him tells him to give it up to someone else, let them ruin him because that's what he was made for. 

That's where he holds the most power now. In picking who can ruin him. 

It's all that his dreams and nightmares and thoughts tell him, when they aren't dulled and fuzzed and cast to the side, and he's starting to believe them. 

That being bruised and battered, being used is his purpose because what else does he have except this paragon constructed with the ruins of the old?

And he keeps hearing things too. 

Things that fall from that ever stalking nightmare’s lips. Constant and loud and they rumble and reverberate in his chest. And he smiles at the others through the fear and the tremors in his gut because he's fine, he's fine, he's fine. 

He's fine--

He has to be. 

And Molly keeps watching him, the others keep watchinf him, and he knows the tiefling is just waiting for him to fall apart so he can say _‘I told you so_ ’ but Caleb won't let that happen.

Because he's fine.

He's fine. 

He is. 

He's fine, even when he's mixing the things in his system with a tankard of some nameless alcohol. Even when he blacks out only to find himself waking up, upstairs in the room, with a familiar prismatic coat thrown over him. Untouched, full clothed, and safe; yet shaking and unsure because he can't remember how he got there.

He's fine when he does it again anyways and snaps to halfway to an unfamiliar room with an unfamiliar arm slung around his waist. He recoils from it, from whoever it is, and stumbles to his familiar room where it's still safe and shakes apart in the dark. And he's not sure what might have happened if he hadn't come to. 

He knows he's slipping.

That something in him is driving him towards a precipice at and he's letting it. He can't control it anymore. It's taking whatever it wants and he can't stop it. 

Maybe he doesn't want to. 

And if they won't help him here-- he won't let them help him here, so he'll find someone else.

Because he's fine.

He's fine; even when he remembers choking and crying. When he can't remember where he is or if all of it's happening here and now or some time before as fingers dig into his shoulder, his neck, caress over the side of his face and voices croon in his ear.

He's fine when he wakes up later. When he can't remember why there's bruises on his wrists or purple pressed into his skin or why his body hurts anymore. 

He's fine; even when he wakes up in places he can't remember, with people he doesn't know beside him, wrapped around him, limbs curled like claws over him. Scared and more unsure than he can remember ever being as he shakes underneath the rasp of skin and the heat of another body against his.

He's fine; even when the others start to notice. 

He's fine; even when he pushes them all away. When he snarls at them, barks back at them when they confront him until they snap back.

He's fine; even when as he loses every part of himself, when he's trading it away for a cure that won't come with people that don't care. 

He's fine; even when he gets in over his head, when he snaps out of it, when he asks those people to stop, when he says no, when they ignore him, when they take whatever they want, when they put everything in him that he hates and he lets it sit among the rest of the rot-- because he's searching for a savior in this sickness and he'll keep searching... because it has to be out there, he'll get rid of it eventually... he'll kill it eventually. 

He's fine; even when he scrubs off his skin, frantically tries to remove those purpled fingerprints and the impressions of hands settled into him. Bruised and black, a blatant reminder of what he keeps doing, of what he keeps letting happen to him, because it has to work eventually-- it has to. 

He's fine; even when he vomits up blood. When he sweats and shakes, curls up in the corner of the room, his skin on fir. When he doesn't have any more of it left and he doesn't know how to get more and he needs more-- he needs something and he can't find it. 

He's fine; even when the things around the bed he's laid out on crawl up towards him in twisting and charred bodies, with familiar faces. Grabbing at his skin and he claws at where they touch him, because it burns and there's hands on his wrists that stop him from digging it all out. 

He's fine; even when he can't remember who they are, when he just asks for more of it and they frown and stare at him and their eyes shine like coals and hellfire and he thinks he can see himself burning up in them.

He's fine; even when they place a soaked cloth across his forehead that sears like ice against his skin and he tries to get it off, because it hurts still-- but they hold his hands and he doesn't understand why they keep hurting him. 

He's fine; even when he can't remember what he did to deserve any of this or why they don't get him more of the thing he needs to make the insects stop crawling under his skin and eating at his bones. 

He's fine; even when he can't stop seeing fire and hearing screams and he's not sure if it's him or them or if that thing in the corner of the room is as real as the flash of gold in its smile and his blood between its teeth.

He's fine... when he wakes up and he doesn't know what day it is. 

His head feels like it's been stuffed with cotton, his tongue turned to stuff, and there's a familiar blue tiefling sitting in a chair beside the bed he's laying on. 

She's slumped over onto the sheets, head pillowed in her arms.

He watches her. Watches the rise and fall of her back, the soft flutter of her lashes as she dreams about something, the gentle curl of sunlight across freckled blue skin. 

And he knows her. But what he doesn't know is how he got here. 

He looks down at himself.

His coat is missing. 

He's been stripped down to a plain white shirt he doesn't remember owning and pants he doesn't remember either. He's barefoot, his book holsters gone, spell components gone, and his head feels like someone took a pick axe to it. His arms are covered in bandages up to his elbows and there's dried blood caught under his fingernails and he's afraid of what he might find under the gauze wraps. 

Morbid curiosity gets the best of him.

He props himself up on the headboard and there's something among the constant thrum of pain in his skull that tells him to get off the bed, but he ignores it because he's peeling up the edge of the bandages and all he can see are tearing marks. 

“Oh, no, no, no Caleb don't do that again, please." There's hands on his, pulling him away from his inspection, and he lets them. 

He meets her eyes and she startles like she didn't expect him to notice her. 

“Caleb?” Jester's voice is small and tired, nearly hopeful. 

He tries to say something but his throat is so scratchy and dry it leaves him as a cough. 

“Oh, shit, right, one second." She leaps up, animated where she was still before, her hands shaking a bit and he wonders what has her so high strung. 

There's a ceramic cup being pressed into his fingers moments later and he recognizes it as one of Caduceus’, but there's no tea in it.

It's just water and he's never been more relieved to see water in all his days. 

It helps the scratch a bit, but it's still there and the thrumming headache is still present as well, the sunlight from the window only adding to it.

“Jester?” He rasps finally and she perks up at the use of her name, watching him with wide eyes. “What... what happened?” 

She frowns, tugging at her sleeve and avoiding his eyes. “I'm not sure if I should tell you yet.” 

That can't be anything good. 

He tries to remember but his head _hurts_. 

“ _Bitte_...I--I can not... I can't remember..." He scrunches his brow at the gaping void in him and it's filled with nothing but the memory of burning alive. 

“I really don't think I shoul--” 

The door swings open and there's a familiar and loud, boisterous voice that cuts her off.

“Jester, can you believe that Nott still thinks mermaids turn during the full moon? Absolutely ridiculous, I mean did she learn mythology from a pack of wolv--” Molly freezes when he notices Caleb watching him and he watches the tiefling’s attention snap to Jester. “Is he-?”

“Yup.” 

“Good,” Molly’s eyes shoot back to him and the tiefling places his hands on his hips, leaning forward. “Because we need to have a bit of a talk.” 

“I'll just…” Jester slinks out of the room and he's never seen her more quiet and subdued than she is now, shooting him the occasional worried glance as she goes. 

The door shuts with a soft click behind her and Molly sighs, settling into the chair she had left. 

“Do you remember anything?” Molly finally asks after a moment, crossing his arms and frowning. 

Caleb tries to. He tries to wrangle that mess together in his head but he can't make heads or tails of the memory and he's scared because his memory is perfect. It has to be. But it's just not there. 

“No.” 

“You went through some form of withdrawal." Molly says through a frown.

“Oh.” 

“ _Oh_ ,” Molly parrots with a wry chuckle. “That's it? No questions, no how did it happen? Why are my arms all torn up? Nothing?” 

Caleb sighs, kneading at his forehead with the heel of his palm, eyes clenched shut against the light because it's really starting to hurt and he can't remember. 

“Caleb, we found you in the corner of the room and we thought you were dead at first because you were barely breathing." Molly's voice shakes at that and Caleb wonders what it was like to find him like that. 

He wonders what would have happened if they hadn't. 

“Jester and Caduceus got you stabilized, but whatever the fuck you took, whatever the hell you found out there, it didn't give up easily. She hasn't slept a full night in days. A week's time and then some. None of us have...we each took turns to make sure you didn't tear your own veins out of your arms.” Molly sighs, leaning back in the chair and pinching the bridge of his nose, “I told you there would be a fallout and you still did it anyways…”

Caleb says nothing. He's still concerned by that wall.. that barrier in his head. He knows that whatever is behind it is something he doesn't want to know. 

“Did you at least find what you were looking for?” 

He doesn't think he did.

He feels sick and battered, stretched thin, and there's something stopping up all of the memories cluttered in his head and he's afraid of what will happen once it breaks free. 

“No.” 

“Thought so.” 

“I am...sorry…” he whispers because that feels right, because he doesn't like Molly' s anger, his disappointment. 

Disappointment always stung the worst. 

“You're not.”

He's not.

Because he can't remember. 

And he needed to do it and he did, but it didn't help. 

None of it did. 

And he can't take it all back now that it's been done and he's a bit scared of what he might have done.

“Don't pretend like you are. Don't lie to me, Caleb,” Molly says and his usual lilt is strained. “Stop lying to me, to all of us, to yourself.” 

Lying is all he has left now. Lying is easy. It's safe. It keeps him safe. 

“You're not okay. And I know you won't admit it, but you aren't and you probably haven't been for awhile, maybe even forever. Maybe you were better at hiding it before… before everything in Shady Creek, but now you can't.” 

Yes he can. 

He'll just move on from this. Find the next thing. And keep living. He has always been very good at surviving even when he didn't want to. 

Survival is easy. Survival is math. Survival is an equation and he just has to plug in the right variables to get the desired outcome, even if those variables hurt. 

“There's a lot of shit locked up in that head of yours and you can't keep it there forever. It's going to kill you...” Molly sighs, eyeing him, and he didn't notice the bags under the other's eyes until now, but they are nearly black. 

Then why hadn't it just done it yet? 

“I don't want to watch you die for this, Caleb.” 

That's not fair. 

“But I watched you die..." he mutters finally. 

Molly frowns, a hand curled close to his sternum. “And I died fighting, with all of you, beside all of you-- well most of you at least... I didn't just let the things in my head eat me alive.” 

“You do not understand--" 

“I know I don't. And I can't. I never can, but that doesn't mean I still don't give a shit.” 

“Why?” 

“Because like it or not this group is your family now.” 

He doesn't deserve a family. He barely deserves friends. This group is his survival and so he keeps it together, he stays with it, but he doesn't deserve their affection. 

“I lost that privilege," he breathes quietly. 

“Well consider it reinstated because we aren't going anywhere and neither are you. You're stuck with us, whether you like it or not,” Molly says it with a shaky smile, like hes trying to slip on that usual mask of surety and confidence, but it's hard. 

Caleb has nothing to say to that. But he's worried because he doesn't know what day it is and he always knows what day it is. 

“How long has it--?”

“Weeks..." Molly huffs, tired and wrung out, cutting him off. “We got delayed for quite awhile and then when we finally got Nott out we found you and we had to stay in the city. We had to move to the Leaky Tap before that, because we don't exactly have the funds to keep staying in nice places, but I'm not sure how much of that you remember.” 

He thinks maybe he remembers that. But it's all a bit fuzzy and disconnected. Mixed in with a feverish haze and soup of suspended sensations and scenarios. 

“You… would disappear at night sometimes before, but you'd come back and I don't know... I tried to keep an eye on you. I kept your secret because I know how you are, but honestly, I should have told them far sooner and I can't help but feel guilty about that... And it doesn't even matter now, they all know.”

“Thank you… for not telling them before. ” 

“Please, don't. I--” Molly shakes his head. “This isn't something I want to be thanked for. Ever. I let you implode and I should have said something.” 

“But you did not.” 

“I know,” Molly purses his lips, eyes impossibly solemn. “...I know I didn't.” 

Caleb doesn't know what to say to that. There's something impossibly guilty there. Something that reminds him of Yasha, reminds him of why he can't look the barbarian in the eye. Because she blames herself for what happened… but Caleb is pretty sure it was all his own fault anyways. 

“...When do we leave?” He asks, breaking the extended silence, brow furrowed because his internal clock is still wavering. 

“For the coast?” 

He nods. 

“Soon,” Molly sighs, kneading his forehead with the heel of his palm. “It doesn't even matter when we leave now, we're so far behind schedule at this point. But Fjord, Yasha and Caduceus are doing a quick extermination run for the city to make some coin before we go.” 

“I am sorry...” he says, nearly reflexively for the inconvenience he's caused them all. 

Molly's eye twitches and Caleb can tell he knows the apology is hollow and as empty as his head feels. 

“Just… don't do that again. I won't lie for you next time.” 

He knows he won't.

He can see the way it weighs on the other and in the creases of that sharp frown. 

“Come on… You should probably eat and the others are already downstairs.” 

He doesn't want to face them. 

He doesn't want to. 

“I know you don't want to see them right now, I get it, but you'll have to eventually and you really, really need to eat something.” 

He doesn't protest because he knows he needs to eat, his stomach feels raw and bloody and more empty than it's ever been. But he doesn't _want_ to eat.

And there's one glaring detail he's missing.

“My coat..? Is it..?” 

Molly pales. “One of the nights you disappeared you came back without it… Your scarf was gone too.” 

Oh. 

He draws his knees to his chest. 

He doesn't remember losing them. 

“Look, I can buy you new ones, we'll all chip in, get one nicer than that tattered old thing.” 

But he wants his coat.

Because it was his. 

“And these clothes?” 

“Mine. Just some plainer looking extras I have. Yours were all stained in your own blood and upchuck.”

He isn't sad about the loss of that wine red shirt. 

He pulls on his boots, fingers curling around the pendant, that amulet that means everything and far more than him, the one thing that hides him-- thankfully still trapped around his neck. 

It's one of the last things he has left now. 

He thinks about everything he's lost, about how each one of those scenarios can be traced back to him as the root of it. 

He starts to think that maybe… maybe he isn't okay. Maybe he isn't as fine as he thinks he is. That maybe he doesn't like this fire inside of him that keeps devouring everything around him. 

 

 

\--------------------------------//-------------------

 

 

 

Molly won't lie. 

He kind of hates himself right now. 

He let Caleb spiral and fall on his own and he should have said something, should have done more. 

But Caleb is smart, Caleb is determined-- and Caleb was desperate in that moment and he had easily avoided them, even addled on whatever he was taking. 

Molly would have a careful eye on him one second and then the wizard would be gone the next. And it only got worse when Nott got clapped in chains and thrown in jail.

Caleb would leave only to return hours later-- sometimes even the next day, stumbling and shaking, sometimes bruised and Molly was scared by the hollow look in his eyes.

He wouldn't be able to sleep those nights that Caleb would finally come back. Kept up by the sound of something that sounded a lot like crying from across the room. But he didn't say anything because he knew how Caleb would react, because Yasha said it was better to wait for him to approach first. And Molly didn't want to hurt him, he didn't want to corner him, because Caleb didn't like being cornered and questioned and interrogated.

And the guilt tore at him each time he let it happen.

Each time he lost track of Caleb and he returned worse than he left.

And he hated himself for it. For being weak. For not saying something sooner. 

And he had eventually, he had caved when he saw the others noticing it too. They tried to confront Caleb, get him to see some kind of reason here, but he only snarled back, grew angry and feral. He would say whatever he needed to, do whatever he needed to get that person to leave him alone, to get angry back at him even if they didn't want to. 

And maybe that's the most dangerous part about Caleb. 

He's smart, _too_ smart.

He thinks of situations in ways that aren't the same as the rest of them. Tied to logic and reason and numbers. He doesn't care for costs weighed in emotions, even his own. He's only concerned if the outcome is the best one for him and can be executed in the most efficient manner.

If it makes sense and he thinks it will work he will do it. 

And Molly isn't one hundred percent certain what dangerous solution he had logiced himself into out there, but when he saw the ugly purpled impression of fingers wrapped around Caleb's throat the day he came back without his scarf he knew it wasn't a good one. 

He knew it was one that was killing him. 

But he did nothing. 

Because he was a coward.

 

 

\------------------------------//-------------------

 

 

He slinks down the stairs, hunched into himself and missing his coat, skin cold, all too exposed, with an itch in the back of his head he can't explain. 

He rubs at his wrists, runs his fingers nervously over the parts of the scabs that stick out from under the wraps, tries to keep himself from shaking but it's hard. He doesn't want to face them. There's a built up well of shame and guilt in him that's meant for all of them to peer into and he doesn't want them to see it. 

Molly paves a path for him that he follows numbly, one foot after the other. He doesn't look up when he's at the edge of a table, when he can hear the quiet shift of others with fabric and leather, he just settles into a seat, the back of his neck hot and slick with shame. 

He keeps his eyes hidden amongst the table top, gaze skittering over the marks hewn into its surface, brain ticking through what could have caused each one, avoiding the inevitable that awaits him scattered around this surface. 

There's a plate slid into his view and its simple, bread and butter, and nothing bright or colorful or carved from an animal. He picks at it, there's a terrible anxious knot twisted in his gut and he's far too nervous to eat but he tries for them. 

“How are you feeling, Caleb?” It's Jester that breaks his attrition, her voice cheery and bright, loud as usual. 

He glances up, eyes meeting hers and he quickly averts them.

“Fine…” He mutters, but he feels like he might throw up from the pocket of anxious guilt tearing up his stomach.

He sees Nott shoot Jester a hand signal from the corner of his eye, the two seeming to communicate back and forth for a bit, silently, but he doesn't focus on it. 

“Beau do you have any eyeliner on you?” Jester suddenly asks and Caleb looks up at her again, confused. 

“Shit, yeah, one sec,” Beau mutters patting her pockets. 

He isn't sure what's happened to his stolen piece of it and he wonders if they ever found his collection of reclaimed goods or not. 

The monk tosses it and Jester catches it with oddly deft precision. 

“May I see your hand, Caleb?” she holds out her own expectantly, smile gentle and soft, a plan caught in her eyes. 

He doesn't argue, he hands it over because he's hurt all of them more than enough.

She takes it gently, slowly, softly, blue stark against pale and freckled flesh, and she drags the eyeliner stick across him, tongue poking out between her teeth as she concentrates. 

She finishes after a moment and he draws it back, looks over the small, neatly scrawled cartoon heart. Stark and plain and undeniable on the inside of his right wrist just above where the bandages end. Over the healed scabs and the new scars smothering the old. 

His chest hurts at the sight of it.

“I can put a new one on each day so you can remember we're with you even if you don't think we are.” She beams cheerily, tail lashing and he doesn't think she understands the way her words are twisting around in his chest and squeezing.

“Yeah, man, we ain't about to let your ass drift off again,” Beau adds, leaned back against her chair and avoiding his eyes because he knows she isn't good at showing that she cares. 

Nott grabs his hand where he's left it to tremor against the table top. He doesn't see red when he looks at her. He only sees sadness and tenderness and his ribs ache because he doesn't know how to process all of this. 

“We won't leave you on your own again,” she says, running her thumb along his scarred knuckles, “we're family and that means we stick together, Caleb. No matter what.” 

She smiles at him and its shaky and watery and he thinks his own eyes might be trying to do the same. 

Because he isn't alone. 

He isn't adrift out on this endless sea of greys alone and he hadn't noticed. He never tried to look because it was easier to suffer away from prying eyes. 

But he never knew how lonely it was out there until now. 

Until they've extended a hand and he's taken it because he doesn't want to be alone anymore. Because being alone hurts… hurts more than coming to terms with himself. 

He thinks maybe he doesn't want to be alone anymore. He thinks maybe he's tired of feeling like this. He thinks maybe… just maybe… he can let them help. 

It doesn't stop him from being afraid of whatever twists below the obfuscated surface. 

Whatever is locked up in those blacked out parts of his timeline or that itch in the back of his skull and under his skin. 

 

 

\----------

 

 

That night Caleb goes up to the shared room, not under the influence of anything for once. 

His chest feels lighter and there's a bit more color in the world. It's not perfect and he can feel things slipping into grey if he thinks about those weeks of time he's lost, but it's something different for once. 

He pulls out the spellbook, flips to a familiar page and runs his fingers along the mended tear, the page a little bit brighter and a lot cleaner where it connects to the book. He turns his wrist, looks at that little heart Jester drew on him at the behest of the others.

He thinks about how she keeps striving to mend these broken parts of him even when he's hurt them. 

He remembers seeing her, shaking and scared, crying, her clothes ripped and he had sacrificed himself for her, because she didn't deserve that. She didn't deserve any of it. She was meant to mend things, to light things, to give people life and hope. He couldn't let that happen to her, because she was meant to mend others with the help of her faith, not herself... Not like that at least. 

He runs his fingers over it, traces the shape idly, staring into nothing. 

Maybe he can bring Frumpkin back. Maybe he deserves that at least. 

And he misses his cat, misses him more than everything right now. More than his coat or the scarf that Fjord had gifted him. 

He kept the gathered supplies in the spell components pouch, among some of the stolen goods he had collected. Some of them had been in his coat and he feels bad that they are lost to wherever it's ended up, but he doesn't want to think about how or why he lost it in the first place. 

Not yet. 

He draws the circle with shaking fingers, the chalk slipping out of his grip a few times, but he continues on. Draws the runes, checks the book over, even though he knows that he knows exactly what it looks like. Sets out the incense, the charcoal, everything he needs. 

He kneels in front of that small runic summoning circle and he stares at it. 

He just needs to say the words. Just have that incantation leave his lips and he can have him back. He looks down at the brand across his hand. It glares back at him, healed and raised, and ugly. He's afraid his cat won't want to touch him. Not marked and rotting like he is. 

He's afraid of what he'll do if Frumpkin doesn't appear.

If he's decided to break their contract because he's seen just how weak Caleb is. How unworthy he is of a fey’s friendship and company. 

Caleb balls his hands atop his thighs, shoulders shaking. He's afraid his cat won't come back for him. That he'll abandon him like every other-worldly being has. Cast out into dirt and ruin because he's unworthy of their attention and their aid. 

His vision blurs and he's glad the others aren't here to see him like this. 

Tearing up, kneeled in front of a chalk circle, because he's afraid his cat won't need him as much as he needs it. That Frumpkin will move onto greater prospects with a better being, a stronger one, one that isn't a husk of itself. 

He mumbles the words, stops halfway through and hunches over, palms pressed to either side of the small circle.

His chest hurts and his ribs are heaving. 

He tries again, chokes out every word except the last one and freezes up. Slams his palm into the wood flooring and tells himself he won't cry over this. 

He tries another time, one last time, whispers the incantation like a prayer, eyes watering and warm and he knows he looks like a mess, but he's desperate. He breathes out the words like a plea, keeps his gaze hidden where he's balled them atop his thighs again because he's afraid he'll see nothing appear. 

There's no sound. 

And he should have known.

He hunches over, tells himself this is what he should have expected. That he isn't worth the fey's time, attention, friendship. He tells himself he won't cry over this. He can hear his father telling him to be strong in the back of his head, because it's just a cat… it's just a cat…

_It's just a cat._

Something brushes against his knee and it's hard to make it out amongst the watery film his vision has become. 

A racking sob claws its way out of him and he grabs Frumpkin with desperate fingers, tangles his fingers in that familiar pattern and his chest shatters as he folds over with his cat cradled in his arms. Frumpkin just mewls softly, not protesting and letting him cry into his fur. 

He let's Caleb spill those twisted and hurting things out into the air and doesn't stop him, doesn't judge him, even when he's just hiccuping and gasping.

His cat came back for him. 

He came back. 

He's not alone. He's not alone. He's not alone…

He holds Frumpkin to his chest until the sun peeks through the window.


	17. Decrescendo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Major Warnings: 
> 
> -Self-Harm (Graphic)  
> -Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con (Unreliable Narrator)  
> -Flashbacks of Rape/Non-con

He finally sleeps when dawn breaks, back in his corner, a different one this time, but the premise is the same. He isn't as exposed, it's secure, and it's not a bed. 

But this time Frumpkin is here and he had forgotten how much he helped.

It isn't just something to do with his hands, it isn't just carding his fingers through fur that's not too rough or too stiff, that settles against his skin in all the right ways that fabric just doesn't sometimes. 

It is a living thing. 

Something breathing and alive, something besides him. It is energy and life, and a weight that can settle on his chest, in his arms, across his shoulders. A reminder he is here and not somewhere else. 

Frumpkin makes it easier not to focus on that lingering monster in the corner of his eyes. The one that hasn't gone away yet. The one he tries to avoid looking at even when he can hear it breathing and pacing, the rustle of metal and chains its constant haunting chorus.

Frumpkin mewls and Caleb realizes he's dug his fingers into his fur, but he can hear something behind him now, feel the hot whaft of breath against his neck, fingers sliding over his scalp, a hand curling over the line of metal around his throat-- 

He jolts, jerking forward, dropping Frumpkin and scrambling away from the thing behind him. The fey meows, watching him and Caleb wonders if he can see that thing standing in the corner of the room too. 

_“Es ist nicht real..."_ he mutters, shaking his head.

Frumpkin paws at his thigh and he pulls the cat back to his chest, curling around him, eyes screwed shut. 

_“Es ist nicht real,”_ he breathes again, shaky, unsure when he hears the heavy beat of boots against stone and the drag of chains.

_“....Es...es ist-- Es is--”_ He stutters and a hand brushes the side of his face, nails ragged, and it skitters like gnats and nothing against his skin with the echo of a bassy chuckle in his ears. 

He whimpers, clinging to Frumpkin, and he doesn't remember having his cat in this hell with him. He doesn't uncurl either, he knows he'll see grinning gold and hard obsidian up there, knows it as truly as the way he knows there's fingers dragging through his hair-- but his cat was never there, yet the smell of blood and fear and rot is damning and --

“Caleb?” 

She wasn't there for this either. 

“Are you okay?” 

This has happened before. 

He can't place it. He's heard that shaky tremor, that accented voice wavering and unsure. But he can't remember where, when, how. His head hurts and there's a laugh caught in his ears and he covers them but it's only louder and it's hard to think, and breath and--

_He stumbles in and Jester is standing there and he wonders why they chose her to come and try and talk to him this time._

_“Caleb? Are you okay?”_

_No._

_No, he isn't._

_His whole body hurts and he's coming down off a high, slipping into that all too familiar feeling of regret and shame he has to wallow in every time the person is done with him and he wonders why he did anything with them in the first place._

_“I am fine.”_

_“I don't think you are.”_

_There's irritation bubbling under his skin._

_Simmering and rattling the lid in a built up cloud of frustration and anger. A seething flooding rage from all the panted unseen curses laced into his skin. The huffed breaths caught inside him like stinging venom from those people who don't matter, but he keeps seeking out anyways._

_“What the fuck do you know?” He snaps out, shoulders hunched._

_She startles back, flinching and that fire in him leaps after it because he needs her to feel how much this hurts. This constant agony, this bruised and battered facade he wears, this bone deep ache of needing something he can't find._

_He wants them to hurt as much as he does. He needs them to know what this feels like._

_“Stop fucking trying to tell me I am not okay.” The curse tastes foreign on hos lips, but he lets it curl off his tongue anyways, watches the way she flinches under it._

_“Caleb,” she breathes, unsure._

_“Just leave me alone...” he tries instead._

_She goes to touch his shoulder and he flinches back because he's tainted, he's spoiled, he's rotting and if she touches him she'll rot too._

_“Please, Caleb. Tell us what's wrong.” She begs and he hates it._

_He hates this._

_He hates himself, and he hates the people he lets touch him. They don't help, but he still does it anyways. And maybe if he does it enough it will go away. It will stop meaning something to him. It will all fade into one and he'll forget about it because it won't have any meaning anymore._

_None of it will._

_It's just a body._

_It's nothing._

_~~Maybe he'll eventually find something in all of it.~~ _

_“Please." She manages to grab his shoulders and she's too close now._

_She's too close, and he hates this body, this thing he's traded over in exchange for some kind of remedy his head keeps telling him to chase._

_He hates it._

_And he hates them._

_And he hates those hands because they won't leave him the fuck alone._

_And he wants to be alone._

_He needs to be alone._

_He's drowning in this and he needs to die in it alone, away from them because he can't drag them down with him._

_And she's staring at him._

_Solemn purples that he hates because he's tired of people looking at him and seeing something broken, something breakable, something beneath them._

_Something that will kneel and bend and fuck because they want it to._

_Because he lets them. He lets them and he doesn't know how to stop._

_And _he's_ there again-- that monster, grinning and leering and leaning down, a hand wrapping around Jester's throat, a threat in his eyes._

_He shoves her away with a snarl because he _can't,_ because if he stays around these people he'll hurt them. _

_He watches her fall and he knows he's the monster here, not that grinning, immaterial thing behind her, because she's staring up at him, eyes wide and watery and he needs to leave._

_These people aren't safe around him anymore._

_He stumbles back, collides with the closed door and fumbles for the knob, eyes wide and chest heaving. He needs to leave before he does something he regrets._

_There's a monster in his head and it wants to hurt them as much as it hurts him. And he belongs with the other monsters out there anyways. Where they can tear him apart and remind him why he's worthless. Where they can remind him that he was made to serve beneath them. Where they won't listen to him say no. Where they don't care if he says stop._

_Where they'll treat him like he deserves._

_Like he's nothing._

__

He snaps back and he's pressed into the corner, head buried against his knees and fingers curled over his ears. He can feel Frumpkin settled atop his bare feet as he gasps, trying to stop the jerky hitch of his ribs. 

“Just breathe,” someone whispers in front of him and he follows the lilt of it. 

Head lost, swimming, he tries to tether himself back down to that spot but it's hard. He breathes in and it tears across his lungs in a shudder. 

“That's it, just keep doing that, Caleb.” 

He breathes again, and again, until his head no longer feels like it's full of cotton and nails. 

“You're here..." The voice assures him and he knows who it is now.

“Jester?” He mumbles not looking up to meet her eyes. 

“”Yes?” 

“I didn't--I am-- I--” He stops, halting on it. He doesn't quite know how to apologize for any of it yet.

“It's okay, Caleb. You can just tell me later,” she says, voice quiet, but he knows if he looked up she'd still be smiling at him, even if it didn't reach her eyes. 

He nods where he's hidden his gaze. His words won't work the way he needs them to right now anyways. Frumpkin uncurls from atop his feet and brushes against his shin, a small curious meow leaving him. 

“Oh, _Frumpy,_ I'm glad you're back” She singsongs as if she's finally noticed the fey... and he doesn't correct her improper name use. “Come here, little pumpkin kitty.” 

He sends him over, but the fey doesn't need much prompting. 

“I'm glad you're here for Caleb,” she murmurs and Frumpkin meows like he's offended she would even think he wouldn't be. “Keep him safe for us, okay?” She whispers and Caleb’s brow furrows. “We did a shitty job at it, but I think you'll do much better,” she continues and there's a strained note in her voice. “So don't get killed again, mister” He can imagine her hoisting Frumpkin up under his arms in front of her, reprimanding the cat with a wide grin. 

“Good, now go give him all of the cute wittle kitty kisses you can,” she says it playfully, loudly, and in a way that he knows he was meant to hear her this time and not hushed like all the others. 

Frumpkin noses at where he's wrapped his hands around his ankles and Caleb cards his fingers through his fur absently, still without looking up.

“Did you want us to bring up some food?” 

He shakes his head. His stomach feels like it wants to turn inside out at the thought of eating, his skin heavy and itchy in all the wrong places. 

“That's okay... maybe later then?” She asks, hopeful.

Maybe... He's not sure yet. There's still the sound of breathing in his ear and a low rumble that makes his head hurt. 

“Later,” he finally agrees quietly and the thing behind him just laughs. 

\---------------------------//-----------------------

Molly idly rings the rim of his tankard with his finger, trying to figure out how to broach the topic on his mind. 

Yasha sits across from him, watching the other patrons milling about and scattered around them, and Nott, Beau, Fjord, and Caduceus left a while ago to pick up travel supplies and things for the road with what money they still have left. Jester went upstairs to check on Caleb and he's not sure how he's doing, but it's been a bit of time, and Molly can't help but be worried among the constant guilt settled in his stomach. 

“Yasha?” He finally manages, wincing when her eyes flick to him finally.

“Yes?” 

“I think I fucked something up,” he admits quietly. 

“We have all ‘ _fucked something up’_ , Molly,” she remarks, air quoting with her fingers, and Molly wonders if it's a tick she's picked up from Beau. 

“Yeah, but like…." he huffs, resting his chin in his palm, “I don't know...this one feels irreversible.” 

“Nothing is irreversible,” she starts, holding his gaze, “there's always a way back, even if it's not the way you expected.”

She looks down at her hands when she finishes, thumb pressing into her palm, and he wonders if she's talking about something far more than just what's happened since she started traveling with them. 

“I'm not sure there's even a way to go after this,” he chuckles, wry and strung out. 

“There is,” she nods, determined, “you just need to find it.”

She always manages to surprise him. For someone so aloof and softly spoken she often offers the right words at the right time even if she doesn't realize it. 

“You're pretty wise, you know that?” He remarks, tilting his head.

“I'm not,” she says, crossing her arms, “I'm just practical.” 

“Huh, well, if that's the way you want to put it I won't stop yo-” 

“Molly,” she cuts him off, voice steely, “I know you blame yourself for this, but you can't do that. It will consume you… Guilt is a dangerous path to walk down.” 

Ironic coming from her.

“Then who am I supposed to blame?” 

“The people that did this, people like Lorenzo, the Iron Shepherds... but never yourself.” 

He laughs, eyeing her skeptically.

“Do you ever take your own advice, Yasha?” 

She's the one who chuckles at that, face turning grim, “No…” 

Molly nods, arms crossed, lips pursed, because that's what he thought and sometimes he wishes she just would.

“So…,” he shifts the topic when he can see Yasha starting to close off, “You and Beau? ...How's that been going?”

Yasha cheeks color and she avoids his eyes even more. 

“Aw, did you two finally talk about your ‘ _feewings_ ’,” he teases, delighted in the way Yasha ducks her head even more.

“She was very...understanding when I talked to her. “ 

Well that's good at least, because otherwise Molly would have words for the monk. And none of them would be nice.

“So, are you taking things slow then?” He slouches against his chair, ankle balanced on his knee and arm thrown over the back. 

“Yes.” 

“That's good." He nods, eyes hardening, leaning in to whisper conspiratorially. “Because If she ever hurts you I'll make sure she never can again.” 

“I appreciate the concern, but I don't think that'll be necessary, Molly." Yasha placates with a small smile.

He raises his hands, settling back and smirking, “Always an option, just give me the signal and--" he draws his finger across his throat. 

Yasha chuckles. “I'm pretty sure she wouldn't be an easy kill.” 

“Are you saying she's better than _moi_?” He mock gasps, clutching his hand over his sternum and pouting. 

“Yes,” Yasha deadpans. 

“ _Rude_ ,” he fires back with a smirk.

She just laughs. 

“Hey,” a voice pipes up from behind them, “what's going on here, chucklefucks?” 

And speak of the devil. 

Molly spins to face Beau, teeth bared in a wicked grin that has her recoiling. “Me and Yasha were just discussing her _undying_ love for you.” 

Beau sqwauks, lost for words and Fjord steadies her. “Hey, no teasing the monk, I can't guarantee she won't bite.” 

“Oh, I'm sure Yasha _knows_ she can,” he croons, tail lashing, and Fjord has to grab the collar of Beau's coat to keep the monk from leaping for his throat. 

“You fucking arrogant, purple, asshole mother fuc--”

“Has Caleb been down yet?” Nott interrupts from behind them, ignoring the other two and clambering up into one of the chairs across from him. 

Molly turns to her, ignoring the snarled curses behind him. “Naw, not yet.”

“I can go check on him..." Caduceus starts, but Molly stops him. 

“Jester's already up there, she'll probably be down any---” 

“Oh my _gosh_ , you guys! Frumpkin is back!” 

“--second..." he trails off, eyeing the sudden blur of blue that has slammed into Fjord and is excitedly tugging at his arm, bouncing on her heels. 

“He summoned him?” Nott asks, hopeful, eyes wide and delighted. 

And Molly looks to Jester eagerly as well. Maybe the wizard had finally done it. For awhile there he had honestly been afraid Caleb wouldn't do it ever again. 

“He must've done it last night, cause, like, I didn't notice him until today though,” Jester laments, waving her hand.

“He _is_ just a small cat,” Molly adds, fingers pinched for emphasis, because he had missed it last night too, and he's not sure how. 

Though to be fair Caleb buries himself under enough blankets in his corner it's hard to make out much most of the time. 

“But he has his little Frumpy back now and I know that means things are getting better, it _has_ to." Jester beams, nodding her head, all kinds of confident that Molly doesn't have the heart to squash. 

“We still need to keep an eye on him,” Yasha insists, eyes glued to the table, fiddling with the tankard in front of her. 

Molly tries not to think too hard about how Caleb is upstairs... and very much alone right now.

“I'm still afraid of what exactly the things he took did to his system,” Caduceus intercedes, voice rough and concerned, “I've never seen anything like it...”

“On top of that my razor is missing and I still don't know where he stashed it.” 

“You think he took it?” Molly asks Fjord, eyeing the half-orc. 

“Who else would have?” Fjord levels him with a hard stare.

“Fair point.” 

Fjord just sighs, kneading at the bridge of his nose before leaning back and rubbing at his jaw, eyes glued to the ceiling like it has all the answers. 

“I can't exactly do a pat down, but I'm pretty sure it's not on his person anyways since the clothes change and all…" Fjord admits, brow furrowing. ”I'm afraid it might be in his spell component bag... and I don't think he'd appreciate us rummaging through it to check.” 

Molly also doesn't think the invasion of privacy and breach of tentative trust would be much appreciated either.

“Are you afraid he might do something with it?” Molly can't help the small tremor in his voice. The thought is very alarming indeed. It only brings him back to the fact that Caleb is _alone_ , upstairs, with _no one around._

“I don't know…” Fjord admits with a sigh. 

“He's stolen other things too you know," Jester whispers like Caleb might be listening in. “I noticed one of my rings missing when I took it off for a bit, some gold, even a little ribbon.” 

“Me too...” Molly admits, because he had noticed a few things but didn't think much of it. “Nothing big though ...I thought I just misplaced some things.” 

He had been sort of distracted by the weight of what he knew and the fact that he was letting it all happen and doing nothing to stop it.

“What else could he have taken?” Nott inquires of the whole table, her voice cracking nervously.

The table is quiet. 

A thousand different unspoken questions and fears mingling between them. Because he could have taken a number of potentially harmful things to himself and hidden them somewhere they don't know about.

“Why do you think he was even doing it in the first place?” Fjord turns to Caduceus, a normal occurrence at this point because none of them have missed the firbolg's wicked sharp insight. 

“I think he wanted us to notice something was wrong," Caduceus says after a moment.

“Why didn't he just tell us then?” Beau asks, frowning.

“Some things can't be said in so many words... and asking for help when wounded or hurting is not exactly a natural behavior anyways.” 

“But we're his friends… We could've listened and been there for him,” Jester says quietly, hands clasped on the table and thumbs twiddling. 

“From what I've gathered, Mister Caleb is not someone who readily asks for help." Caduceus shakes his head, sighing. “He is someone who waits for it to eventually come to him, _even_ if he's bleeding out on the floor."

None of them argue with that, because he's done just that before. Never outright asking to be healed, but waiting in the background, sometimes hinting that he might not be doing too good, but never blatantly saying he needs help outright, only until someone asks or notices.

“I think he even runs from it sometimes," Caduceus continues, "I think he is someone who will seek it out away from those whose opinions of him matter most, because he wants to maintain an invulnerable image.”

Molly remembers the way Caleb had gotten defensive when he thought Molly was pitying him, and he thinks he understands that sentiment.

No one _wants_ to appear vulnerable in front of anyone, especially the people that sometimes depend on you to fight for them, to be strong for them. If you show a crack in that facade, in that stronghold, there's no telling how you might be treated for it. It's better to pretend sometimes… even if the people around you would never judge you for crumbling just a bit.

“He is a man who does not like to be thought of as weak,” Caduceus finishes, looking at them all. 

“But we would never think of him like that!” Jester cries, louder than he was expecting, and he startles when she slaps a hand on the tabletop for emphasis. There's a frustrated pinch to her eyes that he knows matches his own. 

“He doesn't think that." Caduceus shrugs. “And I can't say for certain but--" The firbolg leans in, voice low, like he's wary of the information caught in his head. "Sometimes he holds himself like someone who's used to being hurt.” 

“How can you tell?” Fjord asks, unnerved as always with Caduceus’ level of insight into something probably unnoticeable to almost everyone else.

“His past is written in his eyes, even in the way he talks sometimes. Someone or something taught him what fear was, far before all of this...” The firbolg sighs, like he doesn't like to contemplate over it too much. “Somehow they taught him that punishment was expected for mistakes, for weaknesses. That he was nothing besides what they made him into...and I think… well, I think he remembered that.” 

Beau stiffens, pale and eyes pinched, Nott mirrors her, and they shoot each other a worried glance that has Molly's brow furrowing.

“Who?” Molly asks, voice low, tail starting to whip at the thoughts tumbling in his head.

“Parents maybe?” Fjord supplies skeptically.

“No,” Beau snaps dangerously. 

“How do you know?” Molly fires back, eyeing her suspiciously.

“I just do.” 

“Either way--" Caduceus interrupts the potential for an argument. “Whoever it was, whatever happened, it's all only exasperated this situation and I'm afraid of how it's all rationalized in his head as a result. I'm afraid he might still do something irrational because of it all..." Caduceus finishes, face falling.

“Like when he almost-- with Molly that one night...when he used the, ah, the spell..." Fjord stumbles through, eyeing him uncomfortably and Molly grimaces. 

“Would have still been a better alternative than whatever he went after out there anyways..." Molly grumbles quietly, even if his head still burns and his chest still tightens thinking about it. 

“Precisely my point though. His head is a dangerous place… which can make him a dangerous man,” Caduceus says casually, like he didn't just call the arguably most cautious and reserved member of their team a _dangerous_ individual. 

“But Caleb's _not_ a bad person..." Jester argues, frowning. 

“Dangerous and bad aren't synonymous here, Miss Jester,” Caduceus explains, swirling the ale in his cup but not drinking from it. “Sometimes, something can be dangerous to itself and others even when it doesn't want to be. Even when it's a good thin-- a good _person_. None of that stops them from doing what might be considered ‘bad’ if the circumstances require it of them or pushes them to that point.”

“That's how nature works after all,” he continues when no one else adds anything besides raised brows and curious looks. “Animals do what is necessary for them, even if others might consider it cruel or evil. To them it is just survival. And in my experience many humanoids are not as far removed from animals as they would like to think. We are all still highly instinctive beings after all.” 

“But why would he consider _that_ necessary?” Fjord asks, brow furrowed. 

“I can't fully say...” Caduceus leans back, abandoning the cup he's been pretending to nurse this whole time. “The mind is a strange thing and I can only ever guess what might be going on in it... It's not an exact science.” 

“Do you even know what science is, Mr. Clay?” Jester questions, head tilted, genuinely curious by his turn of phrase. 

“Huh… you know what, not really...” He chuckles, rubbing at his chin, seeming to think it over some more. “And now that I think about it…” 

Molly watches Caduceus descend into a very hard thinking session about whatever has caught his thoughts now.

The man's words are harrowing. 

Because it could mean they aren't out of the woods just yet. 

\-------------------------------//-------------------------

Caleb wanders down with Frumpkin wrapped over his shoulders, the cat purring contentedly and sending a soft rumble through the back of his skull that outweighs the more dangerous one in his ear.

“Caleb!” Jester all but bounds towards where he's emerged into the tavern space, grabbing his hand and dragging him towards their table in the back. 

“I'm so glad you made it down because we've been playing this game called the Crick Queen' s Call and I've totally kicked everyone's asses, like, _so_ many times now, and--” he tunes her out, her chattering a white noise as he tries to keep up with her hurried pace.

He's suddenly at the table, somehow sitting, and he doesn't really remember getting here, but here he is. And Jester is beams at him from across it and the others eye him, some with small smiles of their own, and in Caduceus’ case a quiet, contemplative frown. 

“Ah..." he starts, nervously petting at Frumpkin’s scruff, "hallo...” 

“Glad you could join us,” Molly drawls with a wink and his usual flair, shuffling a deck between deft fingers, “you want to be dealt in?” 

“Nein-- No, I-- I am fine, I'll just watch,” he deflects. He's still not sure how exactly the game is played considering Jester’s rushed and jumbled explanation of it the first time. 

He watches Molly all but flick the cards across the table to those waiting, practiced and precise. And he knew the man was skilled with cards, but he assumed it was just a tarot deck. He supposes the premise is the same considering it's all ninety percent showing off and trapping the unsuspecting person in a false sense of belief with quick fingers and distractions.

They play a round that ends in Beau demanding to strip search Molly for pocketed cards and the tiefling just laughs at her misfortune. 

“I wouldn't have pegged _you_ of all people for wanting to get me naked so badly?” 

“Oh, you fucking _wish_ ,” she sneers, “I don't want to see any of that shit, but I do want to see if you're hiding cards up your ass, you purple piece of sh--” 

“Hey, let's just agree he won this round fair and square,” Fjord interjects, exasperated and Caleb wonders if this is how most of the rounds have gone when Beau loses horribly. 

“Hey, Caleb, why don't you play mediator since you're not playing?” Jester supplies cheekily, drawing him into the game almost artfully. 

He looks between the two and shrugs, “Ah, well...I think Molly won that round…” 

“Hey! Not fair!” Beau throws her hands up. 

“Them’s the brakes, kiddo." Fjord pats her on the back. “The umpire has spoken.” 

“But come on! He's totally biased!” She jabs a finger at him and he just watches, trying not to let the small smile show on his face at her misfortune. 

“He's totally fucking trying not to smirk! I call bullshit! This game is fucking rigged." Beau huffs, turning to Yasha next to her. “You think I won right?” 

“Eh..." Yasha shrugs, making a so-so gesture with her hand, small knowing smile on her face.

Beau rolls her eyes. “Aw, c'mon, are you _all_ against me?” 

“You _are_ pretty bad at this,” Nott agrees with a nod, looking over her own pile of winnings; all shiny baubles and various things the others have produced from their pockets and the bottom of bags. 

“Maybe don't suck?” Molly offers, shuffling the relinquished deck again with a sly grin. 

“You would know _all_ about sucking wouldn't you,” Beau grumbles, crossing her arms. 

“As a matter of fact _I would_." The tiefling smirks at her and it's all kinds of sharp. 

The monk just groans, burying her face in her arms on the table in defeat. Caleb prompts Frumpkin to walk over to her and curl up on her back as a silent apology. Yasha smiles delightedly at the familiar, gently patting Frumpkin's head like he might break under her touch. 

It's all kinds of normal and how it should be, and he finds himself oddly relaxing into it. 

Their endless chatter keeps the constant noise away and the itch under his skin isn't so bad right now, it's almost bearable. 

He knows there's a set trap under his skin though, that if he digs for it he might snap that wire and send things skittering from the dark he doesn't want to reckon with just yet. 

It's a while more of watching them play a few more rounds when suddelny there's a sensation that sends the hair's on the back of his neck to attention and a skitter dancing down his spine like the tip of a knife. He turns his head, sees dark amber eyes across the tavern, framed by a short crop of ebony hair. It's not only familiar because she looks almost uncannily like _her_ , if she had grown into a far more regal featured woman than she already was, but it's something else...

And she's just watching him. 

“Ah, I will just be gone a moment...” he offers to the table, but they're elbow deep in a tense round of cards once more and none seem to notice besides Caduceus, who just nods and keeps an eye on him as he leaves. 

He doesn't take Frumpkin with him, the cat content and cradled in Yasha’s arms, and while there's a nervous tension at the loss he can't bring himself to snap the cat away from her just yet. 

He approaches the woman at the table, eyeing her cautiously and she just smiles patiently. “I didn't know if I would still find you here or not.” Her voice is quieter than he expected, yet there's a surety in it's softness, and it's nearly matronly despite the lack of clear aging signs on her. Her features are sharper than most, but not delicate or even elven, just a bit harsher, not a standard feminine visage, and he thinks maybe _that's_ why she's so familiar.

“Do I know you?” He asks. 

She laughs. “Not really, no.” 

“Then why did you come looking for me?” He slips into the seat across from her despite his better judgement.

“You don't remember?” She cocks her head, a frown tilting her lips now. 

His brow furrows and the more he focuses on honeyed ambers and down to the locket on her neck that's engraved with the moon his head starts to hurt and he squints. Because he's seen her somewhere before, but he can't place it, it's just there, he just has to remembe--

__

_“Hey?”_

_There's a hand shaking his shoulder, gently, and it's warm, the voice calm and feminine, concerned._

_“Are you okay?”_

_He blinks, confused. He's not sure how he got here or why his tongue feels heavy and dry, his skin starting to itch and crawl. And there's someone leaning over him; dark haired, brown eyed, clad in a white shirt that's thin, nearly translucent, and hangs low on her shoulders._

_“Do you know where you are?”_

_He tries to answer, to say no, but coughs. It feels like something is trapped in his lungs, his throat, on his tongue, and lining his gums. It sends a spark of nausea dancing in his gut and he curls onto his side, soft cotton shifting under him like sandpaper._

_“Woah there, easy..." A hand rubs circles on his back and it's warm, and he realizes all too quickly he's not wearing a shirt._

_He still has pants on at least._

_“I think you should get some rest. You can stay here if you need to, I don't mind.”_

_He thinks he remembers her now. In snippets and in a strange sepia, like his brain can't connect all the dots that it needs to._

_He remembers seeing her at the pub, haloed in candlelight, with a soft voice, matched by a gentile smile that she turned to him and he was caught instantly._

_He remembers fingers tangled in his hair, noses brushing, lips pliable and warm beneath his. Remembers a heat between them, matched only by the feverish need to chase away the shit clattering around in his head with something pleasant and almost familiar._

_He remembers fingers, calloused with some kind of labor, trailing up his chest and under his shirt, pausing over his sternum. Pushing him until the backs of his knees hit the edge of a mattress as his shirt was peeled off completely-- and then it goes black and bleeding red, and be can't remember anything past that until now._

_He thinks he might have had a panic attack in front of this woman… And she's still watching him with a concerned pinch to her eyes._

_“Sorry…I am I'm -- sorry I-- I can't..." he mutters, and he can't go through with it. And he's afraid that she might not listen to him, because he lead her here and he lead her on._

_And she has every right to take whatever she wants from him because what right does he have to deny her?_

_“Oh, no, no, you're fine, sweetheart,” she soothes, cupping the side of his face, thumb tracing over his cheek, and he can't help but relish in that small nurturing warmth that almost reminds him of someone long forgotten._

_She's laid next to him on the bed now, moonlight falling across her cheeks in a luminescent spill of silver and he thinks she's handsome in all the ways Astrid had been. And he wishes he didn't have these things in his head that make him broken and sick._

_“Just get some sleep, dear. It's late and I'm not about to make you find your way home alone like this," she whispers._

_He can't help that ball of tension unraveling in his chest._

_The tightly wound spool comes undone with the way she's looking at him and he can't help it, he can't help the things welling in his eyes, because the way she's looking at him is caring and soft-- so, so soft and he's scared of the things in his head and he just wants something, someone, _anyone_ , to take them away from him. _

_He wants someone to chase away that monster that stalks him, the one that watches him get torn apart again and again._

_“Oh, hon...” She draws him forward until his forehead is rests in the warmth emanating from the crook of her neck and a terrible wracking sob claws its way out of his throat and be can't stop the next one either._

_He's never cried like this before._

_He's never felt these rib aching sobs leave him before and she cups the back of his neck-- and he doesn't know her. He doesn't know anything about her besides the fact that she looks like a phantom to him, but she holds him together and he's ashamed because she shouldn't have to deal with this. This absolute wreck of a human being with tangled thoughts and twisting scars, but she does-- and she doesn't even know him._

_She doesn't hurt him even as he falls apart against her._

_“Shh… It's okay. You're okay..."_

_He doesn't understand why she doesn't just take what she wants from him like everyone else._

_She lets him curl up into her arms and she doesn't hurt him. And it's confusing and he's afraid it will disappear because she can't be real, but soon enough he's only hiccuping, diaphragm spasming and he finally goes quiet._

_“Did you get it all out?”_

_He nods against her clavicle, face still hidden against her skin, afraid to meet her eyes and watch them shift into hardened cruelty and ill intent._

_“I won't ask… and I know you don't know me and I don't know you and this is certainly not how I thought my night would go..." she chuckles and it's not wry or cynical, just lyrical and sonorous, “But I'm always willing to listen.”_

_“Why didn't you just…?” He can't finish and his voice trails off pitifully._

_“Why didn't I what?”_

_“Why didn't you just take what you wanted?”_

_“Oh, sweetheart, no, no, no,” she tsks, smoothing a hand over his back. “I should have noticed something was wrong before, I would never force anyone to sleep with me.”_

_“But I-- I do not---” he stutters trying to find the right words, “ I lead you on.”_

_Her chest hitches at that and he can't figure out why. She draws back, hand coming to rest on the side of his face, and he can see she's frowning, brow furrowed._

_“That doesn't mean anything. Even if you said yes before, you were clearly not fully there a few moments ago, so I stopped.”_

_“But why?”_

_Her frown deepens. “Has… has someone not stopped when that's happened before?”_

_And he knows she's referring to his episode and he's ashamed that he let that happen in front of her._

_“...yes.”_

_“Oh...that's…” She fumbles for her words and he watches her eyes flick over his face. “You know that's not okay, right? You understand that they are doing something wrong, don't you?”_

_He says nothing._

_He can remember instigating the encounters, choosing one of them from the crowd of people. Didn't matter who they were, just that they looked at him. Targeting them with an intent at proving something to himself, to the others, that he will not let this fear dominate him. That he will not be ruled by this thing in his head._

_That's it's just a body and just sex-- and he can control it like everything else._

_He can remember it going wrong, the things in his system only dulling it all enough until he's part way through and he panics but they don't care. They never listen and he thinks maybe he's the one at fault, that he shouldn't have ever instigated it if he didn't want it, that he never would have in the first place if he really didn't. And they take what they want..._

_“But I did not say no.”_

_“That doesn't matter.”_

_“I... I am not--” Worth anything._

_“I do not--" Know how to stop them._

_“I should have--" Fought back._

_She cups his face in both hands, her eyes hardened and determined._

_“ _It doesn't matter._ They should have stopped and they didn't, and it's not your fault.” _

_‘It's not your fault.’_

_‘It's not your fault.’_

_‘It's not your fault.’_

_He'd like to believe that._

_But he can't._

_He can't, because there is something wrong with him, and he doesn't know why she doesn't see that thing in him that everyone else does.That thing that makes people want to control him because he can't do it himself._

_That monster that won't leave him alone._

__

She's still looking at him, eyes soft and patient as he remembers, comforting despite the sharper features of her face and she's resting a hand over his own that he left to tremble on the table top.

“You doing better?” 

He nods, because he thinks maybe he finally is. 

“Good. I'm glad." She smiles and its genuine and he doesn't understand why she cares about something like him. 

There's a raucous burst of laughter from the other's still at the table across the room and he flinches at the sudden burst of sound. 

She frowns, shifting so she's holding his hand now, and it's warm and grounding. 

“It's not one of them right?” she asks skeptically, quietly. 

“No…” 

“Just making sure." She smiles reassuringly, “They seem like good people.” 

He still doesn't know why she cares so much. He's just some non-functioning human husk. She could have just dumped him back here and never came back to make sure he hadn't somehow gotten worse. 

“Why..?” 

“Hmm?”

“Why do you care so much? I'm just some stranger?” 

She frowns.

“...you looked like you needed help, someone to talk to, maybe just one peaceful night. I don't really know I just--” She looks off to the side, fiddling with the locket that rests along her sternum with her free hand. “You looked like you needed something... And I've seen desperation and loss before. I know what it looks like, and at first I thought you needed something different, but I think you just needed a good night's rest.”

He has nothing to say to that. 

He remembers her helping him back to the inn in the morning, not asking questions, not wondering why he was sweating or itching at his wrists that were tangled with scars and scabs he left uncovered, or even sparing a glance for the brand on his hand. 

She turns his hand over, sees that fading little heart scrawled on the inside of it among the twisting net of scars, and there's a small smile on her face at the sight of it. 

“You have good friends, don't forget that.” 

He doesn't get a chance to reply before there's the harsh, grating scrape of a chair being pulled out and a familiar colorful tiefling taking the seat. He has one leg propped up on the chair, head cocked at the woman, and a grin on his face that's a little sharper than normal as he eyes where she's still holding his hand. 

“So, who's this?” Molly drawls, eyes flicking to him. 

“Just an old friend,” the woman says easily, smiling at Molly, almost amused. 

Caleb doesn't protest the lie, just watches the two stare at each other before Molly finally nods, seeming to accept what she's said with scrunched eyes.

“Well, pleased to meet you, Miss..?” He extends his hand, smirking.

“Sehani." She takes it with her own sly grin, still not relinquishing Caleb's hand with the other.

Molly's eyes widen at her name and Caleb glances between them at that. 

“I know,” she chuckles, “my parents were always superstitious sorts and they wanted to have one last fuck you to the Empire, even if it was just by using part of her name.” 

“I'm _all_ for that,” Molly purrs, grinning and tail lashing, nails clicking on the table as he drums them, gaze still flicking to where his hand is held in hers. 

She looks between them, a small smile tilting her lips. 

“I'll leave you two be,” she pats his hand one last time before releasing him, “Remember what I said, Caleb.” 

“Ja.” 

She leaves and he watches her go, brow furrowed because he feels like he missed something important in all of that. And he can't remember ever telling her his name either...

“She seemed...nice,” Molly ventures, still sitting beside him, arms crossed and eyeing him. “You meet her here before or something?” 

“No.”

“Oh, well--” 

“What was the significance of her name?” He interrupts, still caught on that little detail and the fact that she never asked for either of theirs.

“Oh, uh...” Molly glances around, eyes flickering over the other patrons before waving him closer, Caleb leans in at the prompt. 

“Sehanine is the Moonweaver's name." It's whispered in his ear and he didn't realize how close Molly was to him until there's just a constant thrum of warmth at his side. 

“Fucking gross...you better _not_ be putting your tongue in Caleb's ear," a familiar voice pipes up from behind them. 

Molly backs off with a chuckle and Caleb watches him eye Beau up and down, stick his tongue out at her, holding his fingers in a V-shape against his lips with a smirk. 

“You're fucking vulgar, you know that?” Beau bites out, lip curled at the display. 

“You don't need to tell me twice, _sweetheart._ ” Molly grins the most shit-eating grin at the way Beau flinches back and shudders at the endearment with a grimace.

“What was this I heard about tongue-ear fucking?” Jester bounces up to join them, nearly shouting. 

“Oh my gods, please don't add to the imagery..." Beau laments, groaning. 

“Who's doing _what_ to people's ears?” Fjord interjects behind her and Molly just cackles. 

Frumpkin is suddenly dropped into his lap and he looks up to see Yasha. "He missed you,” is all she says before backing off, arms crossed. 

Caleb scratches behind the cat's ears and Frumpkin butts his head against his palm. 

He thinks he missed his cat too... 

He thinks he missed all of this. 

All of _them._

\----------------

He goes to bed that night, chest feeling the lightest it's ever felt in quite some time.

Frumpkin curls up over his sternum and he's still in his corner, but it doesn't feel like he's using it as a way to trap himself in anymore, it just feels like habit and routine now. 

He blinks heavily, listens to the soft shuffles and breathing of the others in the room… and then it's black. 

But it's not comforting, it feels like he's drowning--

_He's kneeling, his knees _hurt_ , and he doesn't remember how he got here. _

_His head feels like it's floating and stuffed full of fabric and soft things that don't spike and stab like they usually do. It would be pleasant if there wasn't a hand tangled in his hair, pulling at the roots uncomfortably and he whines because it stings and he doesn't understand how he got here._

_His jaw hurts and there's drool at the corner of his lip, he can feel it trailing down his chin and he blinks, vision swimming, trailing his gaze up and--_

_He recoils, tearing himself out of that grip on his hair and scrambling back._

_“Wha--?” That unknown person exclaims, voice slurred and heavy with something Caleb doesn't want to decipher._

_He fumbles clumsily for the spell component pouch that should be at his hip but there's nothing there. His belt is gone and so is his coat, and he can't find his books either and he doesn't know how he got here._

_“The fuck is your problem?” The man snarls, fumbling at his undone belt, the loose breeches and Caleb tries not to look harder._

_Instead he searches for that razor, that blade he remembers tucking into his pocket, but even that is gone._

_“You were fine with it five fucking seconds ago, the fuck changed?”_

_He is alone and he has nothing to defend himself with as the man approaches._

_“You know what I don't care.”_

_It's dark and he shakes where he's collapsed. There's a taste in his mouth that makes him want to heave and cry and claw at it until it bleeds with iron instead._

_“Finish what the fuck you started.” There's a knife to his throat now and he can feel his pulse thrumming against the biting steel._

__“Bitte... Ich will nach Hause gehen...” He tries. He doesn't want to, he wants to leave, he wants to be anywhere but here, but it's hard to think, it's hard to get his limbs to move._ _

__

__

_“The hell are you saying? Speak Common like the rest of us," the man hisses, the steel biting into Caleb's throat and he whines as a hand tangles in his hair again and pulls._

__“Bitte, nicht… bitte. Es tut mir leid….”_ _

_He's sorry, because he didn't want this and he doesn't know why he instigated it and he can't remember starting it and he doesn't want to finish it. He never wants to, but there's a fire line of red bleeding down his throat now. He's alone here and he doesn't even know where he is and the high is snapping away as things crawl in the corners of his vision that aren't real._

_He needs to-- He needs--_

__“Hilfe--!”_ He tries to shout, but his head snaps to the side and the fingers twist in his hair once again and pull until his throat is completely bared, the knife cutting into him stings and burns. _

__

__

_“Be quiet,” the man snarls and it's all wrong and Caleb feels like he's drowning._

_His cheek flares when the other runs the dull end of the blade over the reddening mark and it's oddly gentle...but he doesn't want this._

__“Bitte... hör-”_ he begs because he thinks some shred of sympathy might be caught in those hardened features. _

_He wants him to stop. He doesn't want this. Even if he started it._

_He doesn't want this._

_Please, gods he doesn't want this, he never wanted this, he never wanted this, he never wanted this, he never--_

_He doesn't listen._

_No one ever does. He doesn't even know why he tries to deny them anymore. Because he was made for this._

_To be used and discarded. To serve beneath someone._

_And that monster watches the whole thing from the corner of the room, smile gold and its hands clutched around a collar of silver. Bloody trails of liquid satin bleed from between its teeth and there's a laugh in his ears that rumbles dangerously, like the snarl from the pit of a wolf’s chest, and--_

__

He scrambles up, panting and wide-eyed, scrabbling his heels against the wood flooring until he's smashed as far into the corner of the room as he can be. 

He breathes, ribs jerky and stilted, eyes frantically rolling to different points in the room, finding solace in those splashes of color that stand out amongst an otherwise subdued palette. Frumpkin makes a confused sound at his side and he reflexively snaps, the fey disappearing in a puff.

He doesn't need to see him like this. None of them do. 

He swipes at his mouth, wipes frantically at his lips with the back of his hand. It still feels like something is there that shouldn't be. The raised marks of the healed brand runs across his flushed and frightened skin and it feels like claws tearing over him. 

He rubs at those raised lines, pushes at them with his thumb and hopes they'll disappear and when that doesn't work he chips at them with short nails, blunt and harmless. He pulls at the lines, pinches at them, a frustration building in his chest and hot at the corner of his eyes because they won't go away. 

He fumbles in the dark, searching for that small comfort he had stolen for himself. The thing they still don't know about tucked within the bottom of the spell component pouch. He pulls the small hooked blade free, the skinning knife glinting in the light. 

He doesn't remember where he stole it from, but he had found it when he did an inventory of the components still in the bag and he had hidden it again because it meant safety, it meant security, and he needed that option still, even if things had been looking up. 

And it's perfect now. 

He needs that mark gone so others won't look at it and _know_. 

He slots it into the bottom corner of that raised knot of flesh on the back of his hand. Watches crimson bead against the steel, blinks dumbly at the sight of it because he feels nothing but a burning need to be rid of this unholy symbol. 

He works at the skin, clumsily, sloppily, hand slipping on the hilt as it turns muddied and slick with red, until it's coating his fingers and his palms and sliding down his arm. Quietly pattering the floorboards in slow lazy drops that shatter into splatters of shining ichor and the licks of pain are dulled and empty, but they snap with more life than everything else. 

He doesn't stop, doesn't falter, doesn't flinch or cry. He clinically removes that tainted section of skin, peels it off of his tendons, watches the muscles flex and bunch, unimpeded by a layer of corrupted flesh.

He drops the knife, bloodied and baptised in his ichor, and stares at what he's done.

He laughs, hysterical and broken, and then he can't stop and then it's something worse, throat closing up and eyes hot. Liquid muddling his vision of that red-slicked hand and the sundered and sliced bits of skin that he's dropped onto the floor like they mean nothing. 

He curls into himself, hand held against his sternum, collapsed around that point where it all burns and bleeds.

Maybe now they won't know he's a coward, a slave, a fuckable thing, with that mark gone. 

Maybe they will all finally leave him alone.

“Mister Caleb?” 

The voice is both soft and rough somehow. 

He doesn't unfurl for it, afraid of what it might do if it sees what he's done. If it sees he's cut that brand off of him, taken away that mark that tells everyone what he is with a single glance. He's afraid it will put it back because he does not deserve to be unmarked and free.

“Can I see your hand?” 

He bites down on his whimper, shoulders hunching and trembling, blood-slick fingers curling around that amulet he cares about more than this shambling vessel.

His hand hurts now, the pain settling in, stinging and hot and slowly building, the air far too cold against the exposed nerves and muscle. 

“Please?” 

And it's begging now and he's confused. 

He was the one that did that, not these voices. He was the desperate thing, the vile thing, the choking, gasping, crying thing. 

The coward who asked it all to stop and it never did.

But never those voices. 

He uncurls, looking down at where his white shirt has been muddied and stained a glaring, violent red. Another thing he's ruined.

A hand reaches out for his own, furred, bright, clean, unspoiled, and he watches it, his own hand still hidden against his sternum.

“Please, Mister Caleb,” they beg again.

He lets them see what he's done, he hears that sharp surprised hiss of air through their teeth.

He doesn't hand it over to them. 

He doesn't want them to touch his blood. It's blackened and all wrong, it looks like rot and sickness, muddied and unnatural, like the blood that Lorenzo had bled. 

“I'd like to heal it if you would let me..." The man, with the pink hair and pearlescent fur that's nearly a soft grey, says it patiently, infinitely calm in light of what Caleb has done. 

He wavers, teeters, stares at that palm, at the slight pink tinge where the fur is thinnest on it.

He's afraid.

He's not sure whether that patience will turn to cruelty if he hands himself over. If he allows them to touch him. He doesn't trust it. He doesn't trust these hands that offer comfort because they might be lies.

~~“You have good friends, don't forget that.”~~

He extends his hand, warily eyeing the firbolg, ready to snatch it back if he thinks the other might try and use his vulnerability against him. 

A hand settles over the wound, slowly, gently, cautiously enough that Caleb doesn't draw back or flinch from it. He watches the warm glow from it and then it draws away to reveal healed over skin… and there's no mark. It's just bare skin, raw and nearly shinier than the surrounding skin, less aged and weathered, and it's an odd sight but not an unwelcome one because it's gone-- _it's finally gone._

“Danke... danke..." he breathes, hands and forearms still covered in blood, but it's all gone so it doesn't matter. 

A hand picks up the knife cautiously, staining the fur red, and Caleb reaches for it as well. He still wants the safety the blade can offer. 

“Bitte, no, I still--- Can I keep it?” 

Caduceus pauses, frowning. “I don't think that's a good idea.”

No. No. _No,_ he needs that knife.

“Bitte, I'll--” He looks around frantically, palms shaking, “I will do _anything_ , just-- Please don't take it.” 

Caduceus frowns. “Mister Caleb, I don't think that's--” 

He shuffles forward, knees sliding through his own blood, hands still caked in the slowly drying red as he lays a palm on the firbolg's thigh, eyes flicking up to the other’s; trembling, desperate. “I _need_ to keep it…”

His hand is gently removed, placed back in his own lap, and he watches helplessly as the blade is tucked into Caduceus’ pocket. “I'm sorry, kiddo, but I can't let you keep it.” 

“Bitte...” he tries again, sliding both hands up the firbolg's clothed thighs, but the man stops him with a firm grip on his wrists and an even deeper frown.

“I know…" Caduceus slowly pushes his hands away and back into his own lap again where Caleb watches them tremble and wonders why. “But I don't want any of that from you and I can't give the knife back. I'm sorry...” 

“Bitte…” he still whispers even though he knows it's useless. He needs that knife more than _anything._

“Can you call Frumpkin back, Mr. Caleb?” 

He startles at the sudden question. 

Of course he can...He tries to snap, but his fingers slip and catch with blood. He wipes at them, doesn't notice Caduceus has gotten up until he's back, and a hand pulls his forward, a damp cloth passing over the muddied skin. There's a bowl of clear water beside the man's knee and Caleb watches it cloud and dirty the cleaner his skin gets, until it's ruddy iron and his skin shiny and pale.

“There you go." Caduceus drops his hands, mopping up the blood left on the floor with the cloth before dropping it in the bowl. “Now would you care for some tea?” 

He shakes his head, because his stomach hurts far more than it did before and the smell of blood is still lingering, turning his head nauseous as well. 

“That's fine...just try and get some sleep then.” Caduceus stands, dusting off his pants. "And call your cat friend back if you can.” 

He watches the firbolg return to his own bed. He contemplates taking the knife, stealing it back, but he knows the man is nearly preternaturally watchful. It would be useless to try. 

He snaps his fingers and Frumpkin appears in a puff in his lap, meowing up at him dejectedly and tersely, like he's offended Caleb thought it necessary to bamf him away in the first place. 

“Sorry...” he murmurs, scratching him behind the ear. 

The fey noses at his now unblemished hand, tail flicking and all too intelligent eyes turning back to him. Caleb frowns, because he's sure the residual smell of blood isn't lost on him. He says nothing to defend or explain himself, settling back into the blankets, curling up with Frumpkin at his elbow and trying to find a restful sleep among everything. 

He tries not to contemplate the startled look in Caduceus' eyes when he propositioned him for the blade, or the way it had hardened into something angry, but he doesn't think it was aimed at him. 

He doesn't think he's ever see that look in the other's eyes before either.

He still wants that knife back... but Frumpkin butts into his arm and he focuses on the cat's low purring and slips into the dark in his head.

\-------------------------------//--------------------------

Molly has a terribly, stupid idea. 

But he needs to do something. 

He can tell Caleb misses that ratty old coat and that scarf Fjord had gotten him back in Shady Creek. And he hadn't missed the flash of disapproval when he had proposed getting Caleb a new one. 

So, here he is, heading over to Nott and the others, a plan caught in his head that's probably stupid, but he thinks it might help in the long run. 

“I have an idea..." he proposes, arms crossed and surveying over all of them still sitting and cautiously eyeing him back. 

“Oh, this should be good,” Beau laughs, settling back in her chair with an amused grin. 

“You don't even know what I'm about to say.” 

“The last time you said you had an idea you fucked up your junk.”

“Okay, well--” He holds up a finger, ready to defend himself, but stops. “Fair point, _but_ , this is different.”

He hooks an empty chair with his foot and pulls it out, settling in it with a flourish, crossing his arms over the seat back, tail flicking behind him. “I want to get Caleb's coat back. _And_ his scarf.” 

He cuts off Fjord who had begun to protest, the half-orc falling silent at the mention of his gift to the wizard. 

“While I think we would all like to do that, I don't think we can spend forever scouring the whole city for them..." Caduceus lays out, practical and concise, but he wouldn't know about the little spell they have for things like this. 

”That's why we have this little lady right here." Molly pats Jester on the back and the tiefling beams.

“I mean, I _do_ know a spell that can help us find it. We'll just have to, like, do a _lot_ of running around the city like a bunch of idiots to find it while I cast it.”

“We do that enough anyways...” Fjord mutters under his breath and Jester bats him on the shoulder, but she's still grinning.

“Okay, wait,” Beau starts, kicking her legs up on the table and tipping her chair back, “let's say we do find the stuff and it happens to be in some dude's possession. Are we all in consensus that whoever we find they are fucking dead?” 

“We're not executioners, Beau..." Fjord says, but there's a hardness to his voice that says he wouldn't be as opposed to it as he might make it sound.

“I'll put a bolt in their fucking skull myself,” Nott snarls, hands curled into claws on the table. 

Molly, while not usually someone for showing no mercy at all, thinks he might not be opposed to that either. Whoever has that coat and that scarf left their mark wrapped around Caleb's throat and caught somewhere in that pained, troubled look in his eyes. 

And Molly thinks maybe they deserve to die for that. 

“That person will not live to pass through another day...” Yasha breathes it like a promise that crackles with a quiet rage. “They do not deserve it.” 

“While I would generally like to wait for the natural order of things to take its course, I think I can make an exception in this case... This person has outlived their worldly use.” Caduceus adds, eyes harder than he's ever seen them.

“I don't want to be a murderer… but I don't want them to hurt anyone else either… and, I don't know, maybe they deserve it...” Jester adds, brow furrowed, and seemingly more conflicted than most of them. 

“That's fine. I'll snap their neck for you, Jes." Beau cracks her knuckles and rolls her shoulders, teeth grit and Molly knows she's itching to hit something. 

“Let's do this, motherfuckers." Nott sticks her hand across the table and Molly eyes it skeptically alongside everyone else. “Just put your fucking hands in!” She bites out, eyes narrowed.

They all scramble to do it until they're all in a weird circle formation, hands overlapping each others in the center in a strange rainbow of colors. 

“The Mighty Nein on three,” Nott starts, eyeing each of them, almost daring them not to follow her lead. 

It all ends with a strange cheer that leaves a warm feeling under Molly's sternum. They're all left laughing in the wake of it and it's stupid, but it's _their_ brand of stupid, and he kind of loves it.

“Now let's go get that fucking coat." Nott marches past them and out the door. Molly looks over at Yasha who shrugs helplessly because neither of them have ever seen the goblin so filled with bravado before. 

“I'll keep an eye on him,” Caduceus says, catching his shoulder briefly and Molly nods, glad that Caleb won't be left alone at least, before he follows the rest of them out of the inn. 

\------

It takes the better part of an hour or two to pinpoint the location. And when they do find where it is Jester is nearly out of commission and they've run around a good portion of Zadash.

They're in one of the dingiest, grimiest parts of this city Molly has ever seen. The buildings are barely held together with more than rusted nails and hope, and the people eye their colorful entourage like it's a spectacle. 

They find an inn and tavern, unmarked, unnamed, and as impersonal as possible. The dwarrow woman at the counter all but curls her lip at them, but asks zero questions when they march by her towards the rooms. 

The spell is almost up and they're standing outside of a door that Jester presses her ear to, listening. She looks back at them, gesturing to it and stepping aside. Yasha shoulder checks it and it easily swings open with little resistance, the flimsy locking mechanism snapping and the wood splintering against the jamb. 

“I could have just picked it you know.” Nott grumbles. 

“More pizazz this way,” Molly counters with a grin, all but flouncing his way in the door.

“Whatever..." the goblin mutters behind him, already cranking back a bolt. 

Jester hurries in, over towards the bed, rummaging under it until she pulls free a very familiar coat. 

“Got it!” She shouts, bouncing happily on her feet. 

Molly looks around, sniffing and recoiling at the absolute stench of this place. He wonders how long this person has been shacking up here. There's the sharp hint of iron under it all, but it's faint and barely there. 

He rummages through the bedside table, idly playing a gold coin he found through his fingers. He glances at the bed, noticing something caught between the mattress and the frame. He grabs it, pulling it free and stares at the piece of woven blue scarf in his hand. He blinks dumbly, because it's been sloppily cut in two, brow furrowing as he looks for the other half. He checks under the bed where Jester had found the coat, but there's nothing. He checks over it again, catching the hint of deep blue on the other side...tied low on the bedpost. There's a sinking feeling starting to take place in his gut. He thinks he remembers the hint of purple wringing Caleb's wrists under his sleeves. 

“Welp, found the razor.” Molly turns to see Fjord dangling a bloodied flat-knife between two fingers, eyes narrowed at it. 

“Guys… can we please go now?”, Jester has the coat bundled to her chest, all but hugging it to herself and eyeing the bed warily. 

Molly follows her gaze, squints at the sheets on the bed as well, and yup, there's definitely blood on them, and he's not even sure what's more unnerving anymore.

The fact that this fucking person has been sleeping in it, or that they didn't feel the need to clean up the crime scene after who knows how many days. Molly shudders, the remnants of the scarf clenched in one fist, and he's far too chicken shit to reach over the bed and grab the other. 

He doesn't like all the implications laid into those sheets and these items, and everything about this room and the person who's staying in it. 

“I'm not leaving until I have planted my foot _firmly_ into this mother fucker’s throat,” Beau growls, eyes narrowed at the bed. 

“There's no telling when they might come back,” Fjord sighs, rubbing his temple and pocketing the stained razor, “we could go talk to that woman at the front, try and figure out who's staying here, maybe get a lay out of their basic schedule.” 

“She didn't seem _too_ friendly,” Molly adds, arms crossed, thinking about how the woman had sneered at them, “but it can't hurt to try.” 

They settle on him questioning her and he all but waltz back to the counter, shaking out his shoulders and settling into a sly grin and all the bravado he can muster despite the unease in his gut as he makes it to the front.

“Hello there,” Molly all but purrs at her, leaning heavily against the counter, eyes hooded and tail flicking lazily as he slides over five gold. “I'd like to ask a few questions, if it wouldn't take up terribly too much of your time.” 

And if he used a little bit of charm in there, well, Fjord doesn't need to know, because he can see her eyes locking onto him. The snarl on her face softening as she palms the coins and leans on the counter herself. 

“Whatcha be needin’ to know?” She raises a brow, looking him over.

“The person that owns the fourth room to the right, when do they usually get back?” 

“Mm." She scrunches her brow, looking off to the side to think, “O, tha’ skeeze ball, yeah, he gets back late usually, sometimes he's got another person with ‘im. Usually some _‘paid company’_ if you know what I mean.” 

“Oh, I think I do.” He nods, teeth grit, but still hidden behind a wide grin. “Do you know anything about him?” 

“He's just some human, been staying here awhile, but he pays without fail and that's more than most o’ these folks can say." She glances around before leaning in. “He's kind of a fucking asshole though, bit, eh… _creepy._ ” 

She waves her hand at that word like creepy isn't even the right way to describe it and Molly grimaces. 

He thanks her and leaves after that, returning to the others to find Nott sitting on Yasha shoulders, aiming at the doorway with her crossbow, all of which has him taking a confused half-step back.

“Uhm,” he pauses, squinting, “why?” 

“It's a little something I like to call the _‘Tower of Terror’_ ,” Nott explains smugly from atop the barbarian, still aiming at the doorway and Molly side steps her line of fire. 

“Very terrifying,” Yasha nods, voice deadpan, but still with a small smirk on her face as she reaches up and Nott hi-fives her. 

He looks to Fjord and the half orc just shakes his head and sighs. “Did you find out anything?” 

He raises three fingers in response.

“He'll be back later--” He ticks off one. “He's a piece of shit--" Another. “He might have company when he returns, but they'll be uninvolved in this." He puts down the last one looking to all of them. “So, we staying to teach this guy a lesson or...?” 

“Oh, I'm gonna teach him a fucking lesson for sure." Beau slams her fist into her palm with a loud crack and Molly is pretty sure this guy is probably gonna lose his entire nose and part of his skull by the time they're done. 

“‘Kay, so, we wait then...” Fjord sighs. “Should we try and make a plan?” 

Molly grimaces. “Planning and this group never ends well.” 

“True, true." Fjord sighs again, louder this time. "Guess we're winging it then.” 

They prop the door closed again, even though it's been noticeably broken into. He assumes it won't stop this guy from trying to figure out if his stuff has been taken or not. 

It's late, the sun ticking down until there's just the slivers of dusk as Molly runs his fingers along the edge of the Summer's Dance, leaned against the back wall facing the door when suddenly there's the sound of footsteps. 

Beau sets up next to the door as it creaks open, fist flying out to snatch the newcomer by the lip of their coat before slamming him into the wall. Fjord shuts the door behind the man, pulling the razor out of his pocket as Beau braces a forearm into the man's throat and snarls. He goes for a knife, but she just cracks a fist into his side, grabs it and throws it to the side. Molly can see the man's eyes jump to each of them in the room, pausing on him for a bit, but really stuttering on the Yasha and Nott combo the two have maintained, eyes wavering on the crossbow leveled at him. 

“What the fuck is this?” The man hoarses out beneath the arm trapping him, voice thick with some accent Molly can't place. 

“Where did you get this?” Fjord asks, ignoring his question and holding up the razor. 

“I--I don't fucking know, man,” he stutters and Molly's eyes narrow because he's _lying_. 

“I think you do,” Molly purrs, sidling up behind Fjord, “so, let's not play games here.”

“I don't fucki-- Who are you people? Why are you here--” Beau cracks a fist into his chin and his teeth snap shut with a sickening click. 

“It'd be wise to answer our questions with answers." Fjord wags the razor in the air, eyeing the man. 

“Little bitch tried to stab me with it." the man spits, blood coating his teeth now. 

“Who?” Beau growls.

“One that owned that fuckin’ coat,” the man answers, jutting his chin towards Jester still clutching the ratty old thing to her chest. 

“Why did he try to stab you?” Fjord grits out, brow furrowed, and fury caught in his eyes.

“I don't know, fuckin lost his nerve or some shi’ probably, never know with those types.” 

“What do you mean?” Molly asks.

“He wanted me to hurt him, so I did, then he tried to stab me,” the man explains, like its just that simple. 

“No,” Beau presses him into the wall even further, eyes narrowed. 

“Well, how's the fuck would you know, little girly?” The man bares his teeth in a nasty grin at her. 

“I know a fucking liar when I see one.”

“Well he wanted somethin’, he approached me, and so I _delivered_.”

Fjord curls his lip, shivering, uncomfortable and unnerved and Molly feels the same. 

Beau suddenly snaps the man's wrist and even Molly is startled by the quickness of it. He looks over to Fjord, but the half-orc is intent and honed in on this interrogation, eyes more unforgiving than Molly has ever seen them.

“What the fuck was that for!?” The man cries, shaking.

“For putting your hands where you fucking shouldn't.” 

“He fucking wanted it! I didn't pressure him into nothin’!” 

“Yeah, but he probably didn't exactly agree did he?” Fjord asks the gasping man. 

Molly isn't sure what those drugs did, but any kind of influence doesn't exactly equal the most enthusiastic consent for anything. And Molly has a feeling this man didn't really care either way. 

“I don't know! He didn't fucking exactly speak Common very well so how's the fuck was I supposed to know if he didn't want it--" The man smirks “He sure fucking sounded like he di--“

Beau's fist cracks across the man's face again.

“You see, pal, that answers just not good enough," Fjord drawls. “And my friend here, well, she doesn't really like people like you and I don't either. So I'm thinking I might just let her snap the other one.” 

“No, please, come on, I didn't--” The man is just straight up begging now and Molly isn't sure what to think of it. “Please-- come on-- I don't--”

Beau cracks back a finger and the man yelps.

“You don't get the right to beg here,” Fjord explains like he's just casually telling the man the weather and Molly frowns at his tone.

There's something uncomfortable about this whole situation and Molly looks towards Yasha, but the barbarian is watching the proceedings with narrowed eyes, a zealous rage caught in them. Even Nott seems unperturbed and more vindictive and he wonders if it's because it's all for her boy or if she condones this kind of thing. 

He feels like the odd man out besides Jester, who is still gripping the coat and watching the proceedings with wide eyes.

He wants to just be wholeheartedly okay with all of this, but it's a bit hard when the human is literally crying now. He tries to rationalize it, tell himself the man doesn't deserve their mercy here because he didn't offer Caleb any, but there's still that little feeling of something being wrong. 

“Please, man, I swear I just-- I-- just--take the coat--” the man continues to blubber, “please.” 

Fjord hums. “I don't think you understand.” 

The half-orc summons the falchion in one motion and swings down with it, snapping through the man's already shattered wrist easily with a thunk into the wood below. 

Beau muffles the shattered cry that tries to leave the man with her hand, letting him slide down the wall until he's curled around the bloodied stump of a wrist. 

A part of Molly really starts to question what they're doing and that maybe he should stop it. 

The scarf piece in his pocket almost burns with the weight of all of its new implications, and he remembers those ligatures on Caleb's wrists. And they're glaring now and there's blood still on the bed and he doesn't want to think about where it came from. 

He tries to not fall into that simmering burn under his skin.

But he remembers those bruises, he remembers the quiet, muffled, broken sounds in the corner of the room, he remembers that glazed look in Caleb's eyes. 

He looks down at this pitiful crying man and all he can see is Caleb trapped beneath him, eyes empty and escaping somewhere else while someone took whatever they wanted from him. 

There's red.

And then it's splattered across the floor, scimitar slicked in a dripping, sliding layer of it. The man's head slides and hangs off his shoulders, still connected by strips of muscles and skin and he watches it, numbly, clothes and skin splattered in shimmering drops. 

He curls his lip, disgusted by the tainted shine of it, this vile thing that's worse than the monsters they fight out beyond this city's walls. 

“Molly?” Beau's voice shakes and he's never heard it do that before.

He swipes the blood off the blade, fingers tremoring, flicking it onto the slumped over body, lip curling.

“He had nothing useful to say anymore,” He offers as his only explanation, low, snarled, nearly feral.

The man deserved to die. 

There's a burn across his sternum, the weave of silver stinging, but he ignores it. 

Just like he ignores the way the rest of them watch him leave the room and the body (worth far less than the meager coin in its pockets) behind to rot.

He knows he failed Caleb. 

That he failed all of them. 

\------------------------------//----------------------------

Caduceus sits with him upstairs and Caleb doesn't say much, because there's a spell he needs to work on before they go out on the road. It's a quiet camaraderie and the firbolg prepares some tea once evening hits, all without shattering the silence between them. 

Frumpkin perks up in his lap, ears twitching towards the door and Caleb looks over to see it open and the others step through. He's not sure what they were doing, but Molly and Beau are covered in splotches of blood and Jester is clutching a very familiar coat to her chest. 

She beams at him, but it's a bit shaky, extending it out to him and the others just stand behind her, watching the proceedings. 

He wraps trembling hands around the tattered fabric, the soot-stained and ash-ladened coat that smells like the forest, and the road, like smoke, and him. He bundles it to his chest, Frumpkin settled around his shoulders, tail flicking across his neck and cheek pressed into his pulse. 

“We didn't find the scarf,” Molly says with a frown.

He stiffens and there a pain in the back of his skull the more he thinks about the woven, deep-blue fabric and his wrists hurt and--

_There's hands wrapped around his throat, thumbs pushing into his windpipe and he's gasping. Scrabbling at them, digging with cracked nail beds, pulling, bucking beneath the weight smothering him and straddled across his hips._

_Vision swimming, blackening and bursting with light, he turns to pawing at his coat pockets, clumsily, slipping his hand into one of them and fumbling for the razor. He gasps in what bits of air he can, spasms and chokes up spit, seizes the handle in a trembling hand, the man’s face red above him, strained. He pulls it free, floundering, coughing, heaving. Splotches of nothing coating him and he can't breath-- he can't breathe-- He can't--_

_He comes to, shivering, heaving, hand wrenching for the ones at his throat but he's caught and he whines. Pulling at the fabric caught around his wrists, trapping him on his front, smooth cotton sliding under him where before it was wood flooring against his back before._

_The hands are gone, but they aren't absent, there's fingers running along his bare spine and he jerks away from them, eyes hot and heart slamming against his sternum. He needs to get away, he needs to--_

_“Ich kann nicht atmen,” he gasps, his chest is on fire and his throat burns and he's trying to gulp in air but he can't._

_His ribs heave and hitch as he claws at the all too familiar blue and woven fabric of a scarf trapping him. Tries to tear it with dulled nails, grips it and pulls, eyes latched onto where its been cut in two and tied to the bed posts._

_Hands curl around his wrists until he stops and there's a weight hovering over him, on top of him and his coat is gone, and his clothes. There's just the warmth of skin along him and he whines, low and strangled in his throat._

_“Bitte hör auf..bitte...bitte nicht..." He shakes his head and something above him just chuckles, a rumbling airy laugh, fingers sliding over his scalp and through his hair._

_There's lips against the back of his neck and a sob ratchets its way out of his lungs, eyes hot and thoughts skittering away from him. He tries to burn the fabric, digs for that fire, but there's thumbs and fingers digging into his hips and he can't breath--_

_“Bitte--” A hand slides across his jaw, slips between his lips and past his parted teeth. He goes to bite down on them, to get them away from him, but there's the press of sharp steel to his throat, the bite of a familiar razor._

_Fingers search through his mouth, dipping into that empty socket of gum at the back and he whimpers at the memory of rusted steel clicking against his teeth. They press against his tongue and slip back, farther than they should and he gags, heaves, a thousand different nightmares sparking in his head at the sensation._

_There's a laugh against his back and it rumbles through him and he digs for that fire, that fire that has kept him safe and ruined him all at once--_

_He can't grab it, it's just out of reach as hands trail back down, one coated in drool and bile, and they aren't stopping or turning to ash. He thrashes at the bonds holding him-- he can't let this happen, he can't, he won't, he'll slit his own throat, tear out his veins, brain himself against the wall, choke on that powder that abandoned him here, he'll-- he'll--_

_He can't---_

_He doesn't--_

_He didn't want--_

__He made a mistake._ _

_He wants to leave, he wants to go _home_. He wants to go home to a place that doesn't even exist anymore. He wants to go anywhere but here, he wants to leave. There's hands on him that should never be there and there's red and red and red and he can't breathe--_

_“I've seen these before." A thumb runs over the brand on his hand and he can't help the relief that they've stopped trailing lower. “I didn't miss them down at the tavern when I saw you walk in. I've got an eye for 'em.”_

_Caleb says nothing, just pulls at the fabric again until the hands stop him once more._

_“You one of the Shepherds’ boys?”_

_“Bitte…nein..." He breathes, going rigid as a hand curls around his hip, wet with his own saliva._

_“Well, whoever bought you shoulda kept better track of their things,” the man sneers against his neck and the feeling of teeth against him sends his head reeling._

_“Bitte nicht--" he gasps out, pleading still because maybe he'll listen to reason._

_“They keep you inside a lot? S'that why you ventured to these parts? Lookin’ for somethin’ different?” A hand pets over his ribs and he trembles under it, vision blurring._

_“Why the beggar clothes though? Cause a thing like you--" There's lips along his shoulder blade, hot air against him that he tries to curl away from with a low whine. “Well, let's just say I'd keep you cleaned up and locked away.”_

_There's teeth against the shell of his ear and he jerks from it, but fingers catch under his jaw, keeping him stuck in place._

_“You're quite the unruly thing, you know." The words are all but hissed against his cheek and he flinches at the stench of ale. “Did they not work you over properly up north?”_

_He doesn't answer, still too focused on the heat pressed along his back._

_“Bunch a fuckin’ softies." The laugh sends nausea sparking in his gut. “Don't worry, I can help you with that." And the blade is back, trailing along the ridge of his spine in a line of fire._

_“Bitte...bitte nicht… bitte Lassen Sie mich in Ruhe,” he tries again because he can feel the cold burn tiptoeing along the small of his back._

_“Whoever owns ya now might even thank me for sendin’ ya back with a lesson under yer belt." The honed edge circles along his shoulder blade, the wasteland of searing skin laid over him pushing back to straddle over the back of his thighs. Free hand fanning over his back and trailing down in a rake of too warm and too rough to settle in the dip of his spine._

_“You think so?”_

_“Ich...Ich flehe Sie an...bitte...bitte nicht.”_

_He tugs at the bonds, arches his spine, teeth grit, trying to get his knees beneath him, to kick back. To get him off and away, but there's a hand tangling in his hair, wrenching his head back, and a weight bearing down on his legs._

_“Yeah...I think they will,” the man answers his own questions, breathily, hungrily, against the side of his face, as if Caleb has said _nothing_._

_A line of fire spills down his side as his skin splits. He keens, wrenches away from the bite of it, head skittering with red, and gold, and the sound of chains in the dark._

_“Sh, sh..." Fingers brush over the shallow wound, musing over the slide of blood, and he whimpers, lost and trembling. “We're just getting started.”_

_“Bitte helfen Sie..." he pleads to those deities that never hear him._

_But there are no gods here._

_Just that same monster in the corner, the one he watches leer at him later when his head is turned, cheek pressed into harsh sheets by a calloused hand, wrists still caught and suspended by the remnants of an apology, fingers purpling and numb,.... as numb as his head… but not as numb as he wishes his body was because--_

__

There's arms around him and he thrashes, pulls at them, hooks his nails into whatever he can grab.

“Bitte nicht, das tut weh!” His body feels like it's being ripped in half and his spine dipped in liquid fire. 

“Fassen Sie mich nicht an!” There's hands on him, arms around him and he needs to tear them off because they hurt. 

“Das tut weh…” There's hands cupping his face and they're warm and pleasant and he blinks because they don't drag against his skin and the other arms around him aren't harsh or demanding, they just hold him and suddenly they're gone. 

“Bitte..” He whispers, but now he can see lavender in front of him and the concerned scrunch of a face. 

“Bi-...” He cuts himself off as lips brush his forehead and its reminiscent of a time that feels like forever ago now-- when fire had been his greatest concern and they had been down in a mine riddled with gnolls and a burning man. 

“You back with us?” Molly asks and Caleb finally nods because he thinks he is even if his skull feels like it's splitting. 

The tiefling backs off, arms crossing and tail swaying nervously behind him. 

“Sorry Yasha had to hold you like that, you started going at your wrists and we were afraid you would hurt yourself.” 

The barbarian nods, eyes solemn and Caleb avoids them. 

“I--” There's a cup being pressed into his hands and a familiar firbolg smiling at him. 

“Don't worry about it too much." Caduceus nods towards the tea. 

“Danke..." he mutters, looking around at the rest of them.

Nott hovers near his side, holding Frumpkin to her chest and watching him with wide eyes. The cat paws at her, pushes out of her arms, and Caleb sits so the cat can crawl into his lap. Free hand tugging the feline to his chest where he purrs and kneads at him. 

“Well...I'm gonna go get drunk if anyone needs me." Beau offers to the room and Caleb doesn't look up when he hears the door open and shut. 

Yasha sighs and he can hear her and Molly conversing, but he tunes them out. Just watches the swirl of tea in the cup still in his hand and focused on the cat laying across his legs. 

“I'm glad he's back, Caleb,” Nott says, sitting cross legged in front of him. 

“Me too.” 

“I'm glad you're back too,” she adds quietly.

He doesn't say anything to that, because he doesn't feel like he is yet…. but maybe he's getting there.

\----------------------------//--------------------

Molly lays the spread of cards down in front of him. He's not even sure what reading he's doing this time. It's a mish-mash of different ones all conglomerated into one hectic modge podge of something that he's not even sure he'll get anything from. 

It's late, the moons his only companion, the larger one full and glaring through the window in streams of silver that play across the deck.

And he knows he should sleep, that they begin their journey southward tomorrow, but his chest hurts, the silver scars on his sternum burning, and he doesn't quite know why. 

He still remembers that glazed look in Caleb's eyes when he told him the scarf was missing, the way he went rigid and then tried to claw at his wrists like there was something holding them in place. He still feels bad that Yasha had to restrain him, but none of them had wanted to watch the wizard tear out his own veins again. 

Molly sighs, flips the first card, scans it over, and startles when he sees a familiar figure. It's not one of his cards. It can't be. Because Jester was never on the Sun card. He blinks and it's gone, brow furrowing now that it's back to its original depiction. The spill of moonlight illuminating the slightly abused corners of the deck. 

He flips another; and it's green and amber eyes and he squints, blinking and Fjord is gone from the Moon card. He keeps going, hand shaking against his better judgement.

Nott; The Tower. 

Yasha; Judgment. 

Beauregard; Justice.

Caduceus; The Hermit. 

He reaches the second to last card, the back of it nearly a shadowed blue, shimmering in the moonlight, calling him to lift it. 

It's him.

Well not _him_. He thinks he would have remembered hanging from a tree by his ankle. But there's a depiction of him on the Hanged Man that disappears when he blinks it away like all of the others. 

There's a nervous skitter down his spine. 

There's a final card and a final member of their party. 

He doesn't know how this is possible, he's not even sure if he's dreaming, or what it could all mean. The cards are strange like that, each one can hold a thousand different messages and metaphors. 

He could also just be hallucinating and reading too much into whatever this is would make him a madman. 

But it's impossible not to to think something more is happening here when he flips the last one and it doesn't disappear when he blinks. 

Because where there should be an armored skeleton on the Death card-- there's a human, with hair like fire in the right lighting and sad blue eyes. And he's looking towards a burning house, standing atop bodies turned to ash and charcoal beneath him. Molly drops the card like its burned him. He's not sure if he was supposed to _ever_ see that. 

It's back to normal now, a skeleton atop a white horse and every other careful motif returned to their original spots and placements. No more Caleb in sight. Molly barks out a strained laugh, eyeing all of the revealed cards and trying to rationalize whether he's insane or not. 

He's not nearly drunk enough for this. 

He gathers them up, shoves them back into their pouch, and tucks them deep into his pocket. He really doesn't feel like thinking this over right now.He slouches against the wall, under the window, streams of silver playing over the floor around him. 

He keeps seeing that man, the one he killed without remembering his decision to do it.

And he's not a bad person... he'd like to think that at least. He's not some murderer or arrogant enough to think he's a vigilante above the consequences of killing another, but he had done it. And it wasn't some fiend or monster this time, it was a piece of shit human who had begged them all for his life.

The Iron Shepherds hadn't even done that, like they knew that karma was a long time coming for what they had done. Like they accepted they would die one day at the hands of someone else. Lorenzo hadn't looked at them and groveled and asked to be spared, he had snarled and turned into a beast that matched everything about him. It had been easy to rationalize his death. 

And he doesn't regret killing that man, he can't. 

He hadn't missed the bruises on Caleb's wrists, his throat, the edges of blood on the shirt and the way he trembled and looked past him at something else. Because of that he _can't_ regret relieving that man of his life, but he didn't like the way the blood had dried against his skin, stained across his coat and shirt. It hadn't been relieving. It had only made that twisting black caught in his ribs larger, fed a growing need to find every single one of those people who ever touched Caleb and _kill them_. 

He cards his fingers through his hair, huffing out a frustrated breath and leaning over his crossed legs, trying not to focus on that thrum of anger. 

He's not justice, he's not the law, he can't decide their fates for them, he wasn't made to be their executioners. But it doesn't stop him from _wanting_. Wanting some form of revenge, closure, anything. He doesn't want to be useless, he doesn't want to sit around again and pretend like things are fine. He wants to make things better and he doesn't know how else to do it…

There's a turmoil caught under his sternum that burns as sharply as the silver across it. 

His eyes slip shut and there's the press of a phantom hand against the scarred tangles on his chest, but he does not jerk away from it. 

It feels like shadows and moonlight. 

_“Do not give up hope, Mollymauk Tealeaf._ And the voice is the impressions of blues and darks edged in silver. 

_“Future champion; weaved of laughter and joy,”_ they whisper quietly, _“you have much still to do_.”

_“They need you more than you know_." A hand caresses his cheek and it's as airy and immaterial as ever. “ _You will lighten their way.”_

“ _Child of the moon_." There's the flare of silver and blue and a bead of red among it behind his eyelids. _“Born of blood, but not to ruin._ ” 

_“Be there for them. For him."_ The moonlight wavers with a flicker of fire. “He is lost, but he is not abandoned.” 

“ _And will always be here,”_ His sternum burns. _“Even when I am not.”_

He blinks awake. 

But no one is there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -  
> German/Zemnian Translations: (Don't know how accurate they are but I tried)  
>  
> 
> Es ist nicht real - It's not real.
> 
> Ich flehe Sie an, bitte nicht.- I'm begging you, please don't.
> 
> Lassen Sie mich in Ruhe - Leave me alone.
> 
> Fass / Fassen Sie mich nicht an! - Don't touch me!
> 
> Ich kann nicht atmen. - I can’t breathe
> 
> Bitte helfen Sie! - Please help!
> 
> “Bitte hör--” Please stop-- (partial/halted)
> 
> Bitte helfen sie mir! - Please help me!
> 
> Bitte hör auf! - Please stop. (full)
> 
> “Bitte nicht... das tut weh,”-- Please don't, it hurts…


	18. Reflections

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Major Warnings:
> 
> -Dissociation  
> -Panic Attacks  
> -Flashbacks of Rape/Non-con

It's the second night on the road and it's been very uneventful. The road to Alfield isn't a very long one and it won't take long to reach its borders, but night has crept up on them again, the moons are caught over head, lopsided unblinking eyes in a wash of stars. 

The others are setting up camp, Caleb setting the silver wire like he always does, and Molly is left to his own devices. There's a small fire that's been propped up, struck into life by the firbolg kneeled beside it. 

There's a lot of questions stuck in Molly's head still. About prophecy, and fate, and destiny and that strange voice he sometimes hears. About the weave of silver over his sternum that is far too unnatural to be simple scar tissue. 

“Mister Clay?” He asks, approaching the firbolg outlined in a ring of dancing light. 

“Mister Mollymauk." Caduceus nods but doesn't turn to face him, fussing with the tea kettle he places over the fire rather than his usual dose of magical heat. 

“Do you believe in prophecy?” Molly settles down beside him, legs crossed, watching curiously as Caduceus palms a handful of tea leaves and a strange moss-like substance from the pouch at his side, dropping it into the ceramic kettle.

“Hm..." Caduceus hums like the question wasn't wholly unexpected.“Well...I believe in _fate_. And I believe that we are lead by destinies we may not yet know the endings of. Why do you ask?” 

“No, reason..." Molly trails off, watching the beginnings of steam curl from the spout. 

“Have you had visions of something?” Caduceus turns towards him at that, and Molly is still surprised by all of the things caught up in his eyes. 

It's not a sharpened knowledge or a keenness, ike when Caleb analyzes something. It's different. It's far more patient and _waiting_. Like all the answers are already there for him and don't need to be sought out, merely observed. 

“Not really, I mean it doesn't make much sense… It's just a voice, but it's--" Blue, silver, shadows, and _moonlight_. “--comforting... I guess. And the most I can recall is a soft light and the presence of someone familiar.” 

Caduceus tilts his head, sloping ears tilting down, and Molly never noticed how much they moved before but there's small tics in them he's starting to catch onto that betray much more beyond that usual lazy smile the firbolg wears. 

“Visions come to us in all kinds of ways." Caduceus gestures towards his own sternum, but his eyes stray to Molly's. “Does it have anything to do with that?” 

“I think so,” Molly admits. He's starting to think it _has_ to.

Maybe he was meant to die on that roadside, but maybe he wasn't supposed to _stay_ dead. 

“Perhaps someone brought you back because it wasn't your time to go just yet,” Caduceus muses, “maybe you have more to do on this plane than you thought.”

“Maybe...”

“Don't ignore your visions, they can be important, they can lead you to where you need to go even if the path it takes you down isn't an easy one...” Caduceus settles back, arms folded atop his knees, looking out into the darkened boughs beyond the reach of the fire light.

“Is that how you joined this group?” Molly eyes him. “A vision?” 

The firbolg nods. “I think it was fate that landed them in my graveyard that day. Both _your_ fate and their own.” 

“How's that?” 

“I am not a stranger to grief...and they had much of it..." Caduceus gestures back over his shoulder as if to reference the rest of them. “Many grieving people came to the Grove to intern their dead and while I helped them lay that broken thread of fate to rest I helped them mend their own as well.”

Caduceus sighs, fingers running over the chipped portion of his shield, the center cracked and showing through with the original color of the metal. 

“I like broken things, Mr. Mollymauk,” there's something quiet and wistful in his voice, nearly solemn, “I like them because when they come back together it is often more beautiful than what they were originally. You can see where they've learned, where they've healed, see all of the scars that explain their past, but do not hold them to it any longer.”

“You think this group is broken then?” Molly asks, head tilted.

Caduceus just shakes his head, sighing like explaining the exact nature of what he's seen and observed is difficult to articulate.

“I know members of this group are hurting,” Caduceus admits quietly, “that they are chipped and fractured, weathered down with time maybe. But I don't think anyone's ever given them the opportunity to break down even a little... or the chance to rebuild either." 

Molly remembers Yasha hacking away at trees in the flashes of a storm, only letting everything culminate and waver under the cover of thunder and rain. And even then he's not sure she's ever allowed herself to just falter a little. 

“I think they cling onto those growing cracks and try to hold something together that was meant to eventually shatter. They won't allow themselves to mourn, to start over, to heal, and it has collected in them and turned into anger, and fear, even sadness.” Caduceus sighs. “It's left other parts of themselves empty and I think they've forgotten how to grieve...how to feel…” 

“That's very… poetic of you?” Molly’s brow furrows, fingers worrying at the periapt around his neck. 

“There's nothing poetic about it...It's just life. We need to grieve and cry, break a little in order to move on. You can't stay unbroken or even broken forever. Neither is healthy, and I think it would do well for more of us to learn that…” 

He thinks about Beau. Angry, barbed, brandishing the brand on her shoulder like a middle finger to all who look at it, wearing scars and marks like armor, a snarl like her sword. Her past unknown to him, but something had to mould her into what she is. Uncouth, cynical, adverse to displays of affection and caring. Showing that she gives a shit is her hardest task in life and there's something disheartening about that. Kind at heart, but never quite nice. 

He thinks about Yasha. Solemn, quiet, withdrawn, and snapping with a rage under it all. A storm of anger she keeps hidden, locked underneath scars he doesn't even know the origin of. Only letting herself cry under the cover of a storm and away from the others. A stone with a fracture that she ties up with her own chains and keeps from splitting with shaking hands. 

He thinks about Fjord. All of those many twisting unknowns under the facade he wears. And Molly hasn't missed it. The way he pulls himself together to lead them, to be something he doesn't want to be. He's afraid that it will hurt him one day. He doesn't know what his past truly is, but when he spoke of changing his appearance, filing down his tusks to blend in, there was something sad about it. Something quiet and lost that he couldn't place. Like Fjord's never accepted himself and always worked to be what makes everyone else comfortable in order to fit in. 

He thinks about Jester. Her bubbly happiness a shining bright wall concealing a deep loneliness that slips through sometimes when she thinks no one is looking. A childish naivete born of isolation...and like the others he doesn't quite know the full story there, but he knows she tries to hide those parts of herself with everything she has. Tries to be the happy one for them all, even if it doesn't reach her eyes, even if she doesn't allow herself to be sad. Even if she keeps it bundled up somewhere in there where Molly knows it could hurt her one day. 

He thinks about Nott. Nervous, tense, wary of everything around her, and even warier of the color of her skin. He still remembers the way she had spoken about Caleb like he was her _savior_. A dangerous mentality born of thrown stones and hatred for something people don't understand. And he hopes she can grow to accept her appearance one day, embrace who she is whole-heartedly, but he can't make that decision for her. 

He thinks of Caleb. The lost look in his eyes, the way he hunches and stutters and shrinks away. The fire under his skin, the one he's afraid of, but still uses as his crutch anyways. Sadness, anger, fear, grief; all of it caught up in those blues ...even far before all of this. Even when he first met him it had been brief glances and skittish eye contact, and Molly had pushed at that boundary because he knew that wasn't all the wizard was. That he wasn't just a coward like he often called himself, that he was someone worth their friendship if he just tried for it. A brave man under that shell.

And all of them have something in them that they can't let go of. 

Even he has that now and it's a unique feeling because it _hurts_ … and he wonders how they've all lived their lifetimes with it. 

He's a fraction of them, a blip in time to the years they've lived, and yet he already hates this feeling. He wonders how much the burdens they shouldered themselves with have weighed them down, how much of their personality is built on defense mechanisms and the need to survive rather than anything real. 

He thinks he understands it now too. 

That need to hide your pain, your turmoil, your grief, and guilt behind something so they can't see it. So they can't pick you apart with it. Because the world is _cruel_ … and these people know that more than most. 

“Yeah…” Molly agrees quietly, “I think maybe it would.” 

“I want to help them,” Caduceus finishes, looking down at his hands, palms face up and fur shining faintly under the moonlight, “but I'm not sure how much I can do.” 

“I think… maybe just being there when they need it is all we _can_ do.” Molly looks up at the largest of the moons, and it's shining and silver as ever, glaring and unmistakable against the sheet of night. 

There's a silent pact between them. 

That they'll do everything in their power to ensure this group makes it wherever they need to go and wherever fate may take them. Because something brought both of them here. 

Someone brought Molly _back_ to them. 

And that _has_ to mean something. 

 

 

\-------------------------///----------------------------------------------

 

 

Caleb sets the spell book on the ground in front of him, fingers tracing over the words and symbols he memorized the first time, but it has to be perfect and it has to work the first time he tries it.

“Whatcha workin’ on, Mister Caleb?” 

He looks up to see Molly, blinks because he's confused why he isn't with the others while he pours over his dubbed ‘boring wizard shit’ by Beau. 

“A new spell..." he offers as his only explanation, turning back to his thousandth check of the wording he knows by heart. 

But perfection is key. 

“What's it do?” Molly continues, sitting down in front of him now and Caleb is still confused as to why he cares so much.

“It will help us sleep easier at night.” 

“Really?” He can practically _hear_ the tiefling doing that little head tilt he usually does. “How so?”

“You will see,” is all he says in reply, continuing his check. 

There's one thing he still needs though.

“Do you have a crystal bead?” He glances up as he asks it. 

Molly eyes him and then looks down at his own various assortments of jewelry and flair with a raised brow.

“Just pick one,” Caleb sighs.

It's a few moments before a bead is being set into his open palm and he rolls it between his fingers idly. 

“What'll that do?” 

“Just wait.” 

Molly's tail taps along the ground as Caleb works and he can tell the tiefling is impatient, but Molly doesn't have to sit around and watch him mutter to himself while he ensures everything is correct and perfect before he attempts this. Molly made that choice and Caleb isn't about to set about entertaining him when there's an important task at hand. 

“Where's Frumpkin?” 

He tries not to sigh, because honestly this is almost worse than when Jester kept asking him what he was reading and then drew a dick in his spellbook-- which he found later and never reprimanded her about. 

“Beau has him.” 

“Why's that?” 

Caleb shrugs. 

He's not sure.

She just seemed delighted to see him back, Yasha as well, and he knows the two are practically attached at the hip now so he sent him off with them, wherever they are now. 

He hadn't taken the time to search out where the other's are during his spell preparation. He knows Frumpkin will come back to him now anyways.

“I need to finish this if you do not mind,” he tries not to bite it out, but it comes out a little harsher than he intended. 

“No worries, don't mind me, I'll just-” The tiefling makes a zipping motion over his mouth and grins. 

Caleb huffs out a breath, and if it's the tiniest bit amused no one needs to know. 

There's a few minutes of silence, chorused by the others nearby, and he thinks he hears Beau shout something about Frumpkin being in a tree but he ignores it. He's nearly done. 

There's a snap and a crackle of energy as a dome expands outwards from where he holds the glass bead between his fingers. He blinks, the warm, orange glow emanating in the fragment of enclosed space and he can't help the giddy smile on his lips. _It worked_. 

“Woah!” Molly hops to his feet, laughing, tail lashing behind him and as delighted as ever as he presses a hand through the barrier and wiggles his fingers outside of it. Turning his hand back and forth like it might have changed once it passed the threshold. 

“Can they see us?” Molly asks, turning to him and the others seem to have noticed the half-sphere as well because Nott is standing outside of it, eyes wide. 

“Caleb are you in there!?” 

He reaches out, grabs her arm, and pulls her in. 

“What the fu--!” She shouts, thrashing before blinking and staring up at him. “Oh...” 

“It worked." He grins down at her and she smiles back. It's the lightest his chest has felt in some time, if not ever. It feels like accomplishment and importance and finally doing something right--

“That's fantastic, Caleb!” She beams and he clings to that praise. “I’m proud of you, but...what is it exactly?” 

“It's something that will only allow people that I like to pass through it...so no one can be stolen away in the night again.” His voice dips down at the end and he doesn't even try to stop it. 

“Oh,” Molly says after a moment like he's just come to some important revelation, before he turns to him, clapping his hands down on Caleb's shoulders and grinning. “ _Oh_ , that's absolutely bloody _brilliant_ , Caleb!” 

Caleb ducks his head. It's just a simple spell and it's not like he invented it, but Nott and Molly are looking at him like he's turned water into wine. 

“Hey, are y'all in there?” 

Caleb glances over to see Fjord standing outside the bubble now, fist raising to knock, and when his hand passes through it instead the half-orc blinks owlishly. 

“Wha? Fu-!” Fjord shouts, Molly yanking him in with a grin. The half-orc looks around wildly, clutching at his chest, all but hyperventilating once he's inside.

“Jesus-- _fuck,_ don't do that ever again,” Fjord gasps, rubbing at his brow with the heel of his palm, still trying to get his breathing under control. 

“You some kind of scaredy cat?” Molly asks, hip cocked and tail flicking.

“Well, I sure as fuck didn't expect some purple demon to pull me in here for one thing,” the half-orc huffs with an exasperated laugh.

“Boo,” Molly jokes, wiggling his fingers at him and Fjord just rolls his eyes. 

“Did you make this?” 

Caleb turns to see Yasha step in as well. Admittedly the space isn't the largest and with her as well it's already starting to get a bit cramped in here. 

“Ja. I did." He nods, turning to Beau who stumbles in just behind her, Frumpkin clinging to her shoulders, claws hooked into her and his fur standing on end. The monk says nothing, just pries Frumpkin off of where he's clinging to her, and all but shoves him into Caleb's chest. 

“Don't ask.." she grumbles, arms crossed. 

“Caleb!” Jester comes running into the dome at full tilt, slamming into Fjord, nearly bowling them all over in the process. 

“Woah..." she seems unphased by the near disaster though, rocking back on her heels, looking around at the simple space that's been conjured. 

It's just flooring and no furniture, but it's not too humid, not too cold, not anything but neutral, and that's more than can be said for the weather outside the dome. 

“This so so _cool_!” She beams, hands clasping under her chin, stars practically dancing in her eyes. 

Caduceus pokes his head in and he's nearly the height of the dome itself, only a couple of feet of clearance still available at the highest point. 

“Well now, that's just neat...” the firbolg muses to himself, stepping back out and in a few times like he's not sure if the effect will be the same every time. 

“Ja, it ah, it'll keep us a bit safer than just the wire when we sleep..." Caleb explains and he's pretty sure his face is on fire, his ears burning with all this attention for something he finally managed to get right. 

He's not sure how to take all of it in. It's just a spell. It's just doing what its supposed to do-- he's just the conduit, a tool, a method for arcane ability to focus through and function. He's not even the strongest or the best at this. 

A simple spell like this would have been effortless a long time ago… so he doesn't understand their fascination with it or him. 

There's a part of him that's thrilled, excited even. The small smile on his face hasn't fallen away since the spell was completed and he can't help but collect their innocuous tokens of praise and tuck them away. It's probably selfish and desperate, but they don't need to know. Their words aren't even that meaningful, but they mean _everything_. 

Maybe he's useful--

“It's gonna be kinda close quarters,” Fjord observes skeptically, interrupting Caleb's quiet musings.

“You afraid of getting too close, _Fjord_?” Jester teases, nudging him, her grin sharp and suggestive.

“I for one am _all_ for cuddle piles,” Molly breathes with a delighted laugh.

“We know you fucking hedonist,” Beau grumbles, cat scratches still coloring her arms and shoulders. 

“At least I'm not afraid to go after what I like,” Molly jibes back with a sly grin.

“Oh, _okay_ , you know what--” 

“Can we not just enjoy one moment without you two bickering?” Fjord asks, exasperated, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

“Hm, lemme think--" Molly holds up a finger. “ _No_.”

“Not until he stops being an _ass_ twenty four seven.” Beau scowls.

“I think you mispronounced ‘being an ass man’,” Molly croons back and Jester giggles at Beau's resulting lip curl. 

“Jesus..." Fjord sighs, face palming.

“You know you just give him the perfect opportunities, right? You could just ignore him and he'd stop,” Nott looks to the monk, a brow raised. 

“Yeah, well, I _never_ back down from a fight." Beau crosses her arms, lips pursed, and Caleb is starting to think maybe she likes the back and forth with the tiefling. That it's her way of showing some kind of camaraderie she can't ever articulate out loud. 

“And that's why I _love_ fucking with you." Molly sends her a wink. 

Beau just grumbles and Caleb can't help but focus back in on the small angry red lines covering her. It looks like Frumpkin attempted to tear her to shreds and his brow furrows. 

“Why are you covered in scratches?” 

Beau colors, going from defensive to sheepish in a matter of moments and avoiding looking at him. Jester just laughs uproariously and even Yasha is stifling a chuckle behind her hand. 

“Fuckin’ stupid hell cat, mother fucker…”

“She technically, accidentally, might've , landed on him when she was trying to do a backflip to impress Yasha and he kind of, might've, gotten a little teensy, weensy bit grumpy about it,” Jester supplies all too cheerily. 

Beau goes to protest, arms thrown up in the air, but she falters and backs down with a resigned look in her eyes. 

“A _bit_?” Molly asks incredulously, eyeing the monk littered in claw marks with a cocked brow.

“ _Well_...,” Jester drags out, shrugging. “Maybe a lot. He ended up hissing down at her from a tree and she _maybe_ had to bribe him just a little bit to get him back down.” Jester pinches her fingers close to her cheek, smiling and glancing over at Beau who is still shuffling in place and scuffing at the floor. 

“Maybe show off _away_ from my cat next time." Caleb side-eyes her and Frumpkin meows, nearly petulantly. 

“Hey!” she barks, “That little asshole shouldn't have gotten in my way!” 

“Maybe you shouldn't be trying to do backflips for your girlfriend,” Molly jibes.

“Wha- She's not-” Beau splutters, glancing around at all of them and even Yasha’s ears are a bit tinged beside her. 

“Mhm,” Molly hums skeptically.

“We-”

“Go on.” 

“Shut up.”

“Oo, that one _stung_. How could I possibly survive anymore of your scathing and well thought out insults?” Molly mock swoons with a grin. 

“Everyone just go collect your shit,” Fjord interjects between the two of them before it can labor on, “We're sleeping in here tonight.” 

“I'll still set up the wire… just in case.” He goes to step out, to retreat for a bit so he can gather himself, but freezes. “ _Scheiße.”_

“What?” Fjord asks. 

“I can't leave or the spell ends.” And he winces. It's a mistake and he shouldn't have done it. Mistakes aren't rewarded, they're not tolerated, and they should never happen because he should be _perfect_. 

“Oh, well... I think it'll be fine." Fjord rubs at the back of his neck. "We'll do watch shifts just in case.” 

Caleb nods but there's a nervous tension under his skin. It's a break in the routine he's started back up and it feels wrong to not follow it. And he made a mistake, and that should have never happened...

“I should have thought about setting it before I did this one…” 

He should have known, he should have thought ahead. Mistakes like this are childish and naive, and he needs to be better than this. He should have known, and there's no excuse for not having remembered to do it. 

“Can't you just lay it around the inner perimeter of the bubble?” Nott asks and he nods absently, brow furrowing.

He guesses that could work, but it would be more effective if it was wider than the bubble, than he could know if someone was approaching it. And he's not stupid, he knows that there are those who can nullify the Tiny Hut, snap it out of existence and then they would be all too vulnerable and exposed. 

He goes about doing it anyways. It's familiar and it slots into that routine and keeps thing ticking, it keeps his hands busy and his mind distracted from thinking about how he'll be crammed up next to the others in a messy dog-pile when he has to go to sleep. 

And he can't help but dwell on the fact that he made a mistake. That's dangerous. What if he did something like that in a life or death situation? Ikithon would never allow it--

“Caleb?” 

He didn't realize he stopped unwinding the spool until he hears Nott's voice and he realizes his hands are shaking. He's not even sure how long he's been kneeling in the same spot for. 

“Is everything okay?” 

“Ja, ja, wunderbar…” he tries to play it off, but he can feel the quake in his voice. 

She doesn't pry and he's grateful. His head is buzzes and it's harder to focus on the thread beneath his fingers. Frumpkin butts his head against his hands and he cards his fingers through the fey's fur, other hand still clutched around the bite of the wire. 

It's fine. He's fine. It's a mistake but-- but they won't do anything about it… They won't.

It doesn't stop his chest from constricting, his heart from beating against his sternum, or a cold sweat slipping down his back-- and he wishes he had his scarf still. 

He finishes the spell by time the others are back and settled down in the limited space. Caduceus is the only one sitting up, staring outside the dome, face drawn, but not tired, just contemplative.

There's a small space, an empty bed roll, carved out beside a maze of bodies. 

Fjord has his head pillowed on Jester's stomach, the tiefling resting her head on Yasha’s thigh, talking animatedly about something, waving her hands in the air like she can paint a picture for them. Yasha has an arm under an uncharacteristically quiet Beau’s head, who's watching Jester speak and gesticulate with rapt attention. Molly is lounging back and resting against Yasha’s torso, half propped up on his elbows, opposite the side where Beau is and beside the still babbling blue tiefling, eyes closed and tail tapping along the floor. Nott is curled up next to the lone bed roll, near Yasha’s head. Frumpkin trots over to circle atop it and settle down in a curled loaf of a cat. 

And it's all a bit of a chaotic mess. 

He picks his way over, extra careful not to step on Fjord, Jester, or Molly, or any stray tiefling tails as he goes. He finally makes it there unscathed and Frumpkin shows no signs of relinquishing his domain so Caleb lifts him up, sets him back down on Yasha’s chest where the familiar just readjusts, turns back into a lump of fur and ears, and purrs contentedly. 

“Welcome to the party." Molly grins at him as he sits down, legs crossed in front of him and he's not really sure how to reply to that or if he's even comfortable lying down just yet. 

“Ja, uh--” 

“-- And _then_ Oskar was all like ‘Oh, my sweet blushing petunia, how I've missed the taste of thine rosy lips’ and they start making out and it's all very romantic and yeah, the ship is still sinking in the background, but that doesn't matter because they're in _love_ Beau, so who cares if the ship is sinking, you know?”

“Yeah, super interesting, I'm totally keeping up with all of this.” The monk yawns.

“Do they fuck on the dingy?”Molly asks, head tilting. 

“I haven't gotten past the part where they're telling each other about their _feelings_.” 

“ _Bor-ing_.” Molly crosses his arms behind his head, settling further into his barbarian shaped pillow. 

“It's not boring though, _Molly,_ cause like they're telling each other their deepest darkest secrets and fears and it's so good and like you guys should really all read it," Jester continues animatedly. 

“I'll get right on it,” Molly waves a hand dismissively. 

Caleb finds himself laying backwards, then curling up on his side. Listening to them all chatter, warmth at his sides and all around him in his small pocket among them. Nott to his back, Molly in front of him, and Yasha just above where he's curled up. Frumpkin trots his way off of the barbarian and slips under his arm, stretching and yawning, spilling into a mess of fur and cat, and Caleb worries at his scruff. He listens to the melodic lilt of voices, not focusing on any one in particular and eventually it turns into metronomic breathing around him as they each slip into sleep. 

He closes his own eyes. Listens to them all. Alive. And there's the radiance of warm bodies at all sides and while he thought it might be constricting or choking it's not. It feels like safety and trust… 

...he remembers huddling up with Astrid and Eodwulf, in the cold and dark, when there was no hope for warmth and light for a few days. They had to learn to withstand extreme conditions so they could be strong. So they could be perfect. So they could serve the Empire to the end of their sanity and endure all manners of duress. 

He breathes and he can hear the murmur of them in the dark, whispered reassurances and promises… He knows they won't be left to die down here… They're valuable, they're useful, they're assets… He knows they won't be left down here…

There's the hush of chains in the dark and the sound of boots and dangerous laughter that rumbles beneath his sternum, and he reaches for the shadows because they're comforting and familiar---

 

__

_“Fucking, slut,” it's slurred and airy, and whispered against his skin where lips latch onto the side of his neck. The brush of teeth sends him drowning in red and he wants them to stop, but he can't get his arms to move._

_His body feels like a live-wired dead weight, each touch against his skin igniting across him, but the parts of him just stay limp and pliable._

_There's fingers digging into his rib cage and there's tears collecting at the edges of his face and those same searching lips just take them away and chuckle; all nails rattling in a tin can._

_There's breath, hot and bled through with alcohol panted agaisnt his face and he doesn't want this. Even as there's lips against his own numbed ones, devouring and hungry, and he can't move._

_There's hips rocking into him and he's bent in two, fingers dug into his thighs-- and he wants them to burn away into ash but his lips are dead and numb. Still as he stares up into the ceiling, because it's always easier that way._

_There's a hand on him, one that sends him panting and gasping where it curls around him calloused fingers, rough, harsh ones that move jerkily. But it's anything, it's friction and stimulus and he chases after it even if he wants to choke. It's the most affection he'll find here._

_They moan and shudder and snap into him until they're done in a string of curses, a gasped breath in his ear, and they force him to finish as well with his own quiet sob._

_There's coins thrown on him, searing against heated flesh and the things drying against his skin that make him want to heave and scream and hit something, but he just lays there numbly. Lost to the shit in his head._

__

 

He jolts awake, surrounded by warm bodies and a warm orange glow from the dome around them. 

His chest heaves, eyes wild, and there's more things in his head that he doesn't want than ever before.

His skin itches, a burn taking root behind his eyes, and he's not sure if it's fear or that bone-deep need for a numbing sensation he abandoned in Zadash that makes the wet tracks tear down his cheeks. 

Frumpkin mewls, pawing at his thigh and he flinches back from the sensation, the flash of fingers digging into the meat of his leg sending him to his feet. The cat blinks up at him and he can't deal with that look in the fey's eyes right now. He raises a hand, trembling fingers going to snap the other away, but he can't.

He can't. 

He stumbles back, tripping on whoever was beside him, barely catching himself and whimpering, heart slamming against his ribs. 

“Wha--?” A voice slurs, half caught in sleep and half annoyed.

He needs to get away from here. 

“Caleb?” 

He turns and bolts at the sound of his name-- that name, leaving the false safety of the dome that blinks out with a soft pop the second he breaks free of the barrier. His foot catches on something before he can reach the new, alluring safety of the tree line and he slams into the ground. Catching himself on aching wrists, flinching at the sight of the sprawling mess of scars on them. 

There's footsteps and other voices now, confused and frantic and he needs to get away from them. 

He goes to stand, goes to dart further into the dark where it's safe and away from any others. Where he can fall apart alone, invulnerable.>But his ankle gives and he tumbles back to his knees. Palms pressed into the soil, trembling, rattling apart-- and the footsteps are louder now. He's doesn't know who they belong to, and it's dark, and he's hurt, and if they catch him they'll take whatever they want. 

He tries to stand again and the cry that leaves him is strangled and bleating as he collapses back onto the ground, cheek pressed into the grass and panting. His knees won't even work properly anymore, turned to liquid inside of him with everything else melting away in his head. 

He needs to get away, 

He claws at the dirt, drags himself forward, heaves himself forwards, because he has to try. 

He won't let them take what they want so easily this time. 

The voices are closer. 

He's almost there, just a little bit further, it's right there, if he can just get under that gnarled collection of undergrowth, they won't find him--

“Caleb?” 

He can't stop the whimper that leaves him, bled through with a constant, lingering fear-- and he doesn't want them to catch him. 

He feels like he's clawing his way up blood slicked stone steps, freedom a mile away up a winding terraced darkness, and a demon behind him that he could have never anticipated. 

There's footsteps, the harsh crunch of dried grass-- the gait of a body, of a thing, of a predator, of danger, of a heavy form on cobbled stone, enticed by the scent of his blood and fear. He knows if he looks back he'll see blood slicked teeth, flashing glinting red and gold in the lights of furnaces and with a promise to tear him apart in every way they possibly can. 

He digs his fingers into the soil, prays to those gods that hate him, those deities that forsake him, he sends up that plea, because someone has to be listening eventually. 

There has to be someone. 

“Caleb..?” And it's not the predatory confidence of that thing he remembers. 

It's shaking, it's scared, it sounds like prey, like him, but he thinks it might be a lie, a trick. 

“Caleb, please look at me,” they beg, and that thing never begged, he only hissed and drawled and crooned. 

None of the others ever begged either.

They just gasped and panted, bit out words in his ear and against his skin that stuck in his head.

He turns his head, glances over his shoulder, curls his legs close to his chest, makes himself as small as possible, because maybe he'll look unappealing, maybe he'll look like something they don't want to make theirs. 

And all he sees is lavender skin and a coat dipped in colors.

Something in him snaps around, frantic, frenzied, desperate. And he wants it gone, he thought he was doing better but it's all back and _he wants it gone._

“Please take it away..." he breathes to that angel, shaking, desperate, because he knows they can finally save him. 

“I can't, Caleb, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry..." they breathe back and he knows they can't, no one can, not even the products of the gods can save him anymore. 

“ _Bitte_ …" He begs. He needs it to try.

“I can't, you know I can't..." The figure is kneeling now; close, warm, colorful, lavender.

“ _Bitte_..." he reaches out for them with a shaking and scarred hand, nails and fingers caked with the soil he crawled through on his belly into this hell. 

He just wants it gone.

It hurts. All of it hurts. His head constantly hurts and his body hurts, even when he knows it's fine. 

They grasp his trembling fingers with their own, draw him close and he lets them enfold him in the warmth and light of them, even if he knows he's a spot of darkness and dirt against them. 

“I'm so sorry..." The words are muffled into his hair and there's arms around him that are firm, but he doesn't think they are meant to trap him. “I'm so sorry.” 

“Take it away," he gasps wetly against the fabric and lavender skin he's buried his face into. Hiding among the floral and spiced scent that doesn't remind him of all the phantom aches in his body. 

“I can't do that, I can't, Caleb.” The voice shudders, the figure gently rocking him, and he thinks he's begging them now, muttering through tears and mucous and everything bunched in his throat 

It's all incoherent, like claws are tearing their way out between the gaps in his ribs and he can't stop them. 

“I did not-- I-- I never-- I didn't want it,” he strangles out amongst it all. 

Because he didn't. Even if he started it. Even if he began each encounter with an intent and a purpose, he didn't. He needs that voice to know he didn't want it. That he didn't want those people to touch him. That he never wanted to agree to Lorenzo’s deals. That he never wanted to give himself over like that to any of them, but he had to. 

He had to, but he didn't want to. 

“I know, I know...”

“I didn't.”

He says it again.

Because they have to know he didn't want those people to touch him, to take what they wanted. That he isn't the names-- the words they would hiss at him either. 

“I know, Caleb....” A hand cups the back of his head, holds him there, and he doesn't flinch from it because it's warm, it's comforting-- it's nothing he deserves, but he craves it. 

“I never wanted any of it…" he mumbles against them, tired and wrung out, and he needs them to know because he didn't. 

He didn't. 

“I believe you..." the voice breathes, watery and shaking and he can hear it rumble softly from their chest. “I believe you.” 

His sternum feels like its shattering, like he's cracking into glass and fracturing as he clings onto that warmth and that brightness with desperate shaking fingers. 

“I believe you, Caleb.” 

He heaves with a choking sob, shoulders shuddering, because that voice believes him.

They hold him together and he lets them. And he's tired. He's constantly tired; of these memories, these fears, these dreams. He's tired in every way he can remember. 

He sags against the figure holding him, fingers clutched into the back of a familiar coat, small hitching breathes leaving him that are soothed by the hand on his back. It's warm and comforting and he wants it to last forever. 

And he's tired… 

His eyes slip shut, blinking back open, and he jerks in surprise, but there's that same soft rumble of a voice beneath his ear that shushes him. A hand curls around the back of his skull, against his hair, but it doesn't tear at it. It doesn't rip at him and his brows furrow, but he's quickly sinking back into that alluring black, blinking… 

...and it's warm...and he's tired… and he-- 

He wakes up, under the light of a new day, curled up on his side, an empty coat pillowed beneath his head, fingers caught in it, tangled amongst the strange assortment of fabrics and textures. There's a familiar boot in his immediate line of sight and he shifts his gaze, looking up to see Molly sitting there, staring at the beginnings of a sunrise, not seeming to have noticed him stirring awake yet. 

Caleb doesn't know what to say so he just watches, waits, thinks about how he cried into this man's shoulder and fell asleep against him like a _child_. 

He can't help the flare of shame on the back of his neck for such a glaring lapse in judgement. 

“Hey..." Molly says quietly and Caleb notices the tiefling is finally looking at him, eyes scrunched at the edges and his smile different from any other time he's seen it.

“Ah...hallo…" He murmurs back, avoiding his eyes.

“If you're still not ready to talk about it that's fine,” Molly sighs, but it's not derogatory or disappointed, it just is. “We'll all still be here when you are.” 

“...danke." he sits up, folding his legs under him and he can't help the small smile when Frumpkin meows his discontent at losing his personal heater.

The fey lumbers into Caleb's lap, spilling across his legs and stretching, a yawn parting his maw, ears pressing back and Caleb can't help but be endeared by it. The familiar doesn't have to sleep but he seems to enjoy making a habit of it. 

“Little monster bit my ankle to wake me up, you know,” Molly says and Caleb goes to flinch at the words but the tiefling's tone is far too fond for it to be any derision. 

“He also apparently smacked Fjord in the face, which I _wish_ I could've seen but…" Molly trails off beside him and Caleb doesn't need a keen mind to fill in the blanks of what happened once Frumpkin got him up. 

“He has always been a bit of an Arschloch...” Frumpkin meows loudly, almost offended, claws kneading into Caleb's leg and he laughs. "But he is _my_ Arschloch.” 

The fey settles back after that, seemingly satisfied, tail flicking and purring, a constant rumble against his thighs. 

“Well you have a whole pack of assholes to look after you now, not just Frumpkin,” Molly chuckles, seemingly amused by the wordplay, “so don't forget that.” 

Caleb watches the dance of sunlight on the horizon, cresting the tops of the low hung clouds, fracturing through them in rays of light that split and leap for the heavens. There's the beginnings of the forests morning stirrings and the chatter of birds and beasts around them. 

And he can't help but hear the others, laughing and raucous as usual just out of his peripherals. Someone is clanging a pot with a spoon for some reason and he can hear Jester talking as loudly as ever, Beau cursing while Fjord reprimands her with a stern ‘hey!’. 

“Ja,” he agrees after a moment, glancing over to Molly, “little hard to when you are all so loud.”

“Was that…” The tiefling looks over at him, the orange of sunrise playing across lavender and glinting off the delighted smile he's wearing, “Was that a _joke_?” 

“No, just an observation,” Caleb deadpans, turning his attention back to his lap and the fey curled up in it. 

Molly laughs and Caleb can't help the small smile on his lips at that. 

 

 

 

\-------

 

 

 

They all but breeze by Alfield. 

Briefly stopping to chat with Bryce and the watchmaster is as pleasant as ever, but Caleb can't help the spark of nausea in him. Not towards any of them, but the fact that they're back in some form of civilization, and one of his first thoughts had been to seek out a shoppe and figure out what kinds of things they sell under the counter. 

He doesn't want to do any of that again, but there's a crawling itching under his skin, a reminder that it's easy, that he can make it all go away with a simple exchange of coins. 

He drinks that night they stay in Alfield, the first time since he went through withdrawal, and the others nervously eye him. But he needs something to take the edge off, just nullify that little thought until they're back out of civilization and back on the road. 

They keep a careful eye on him and he's nearly grateful even if a part of him is frustrated at their needless coddling. Someone slips the tankard out of his hand, replaces it with one of water after a few rounds and he doesn't question it too much. 

Later someone helps him up the stairs, Frumpkin wrapped around his neck, and the familiar isn't warning him of danger so it must be someone he knows. He's laid down on a bed and he doesn't stop to think about how he should sleep on the ground, that he doesn't deserve to be comfortable, nor does he want the memories laid into the innocuous object, but there's a coat laid over him and it's chromatic and unmistakable. It smells nothing like leather, or blood, or alcohol, or rot--

He wakes up the next day and Nott is curled up beside him, Frumpkin kneading at her back and twisting to him with wide eyes when Caleb sits up. His fingers are twisted into fabric lined with embroidery and he looks down to see a coat that he's woken up with far too frequently now. He runs his hands over the raised thread of the designs and there's something oddly therapeutic about the texture. He idly traces the patterns, the light of sunrise from the window illuminating the colors. 

He remembers leaving it to hang, like a scarecrow, over the grave they dug for Molly. He's not sure if it was meant to protect the newly hallowed ground or if it would just be too painful to keep the thing. He just knew it was never meant to be empty, it was always meant to have life in it. 

A part of him had contemplated keeping it as a reminder, and he knows Beauregard thought it too, but the periapt and the cards were enough. The coat was meant to die with him, because it could _never_ live on its own. It was just a coat without the owner, but it means so much more when paired with that burning vibrancy. 

Someone clears their throat and there's a hand extended into his line of sight, covered in lavender hues. 

“You really seem to like the thing,” Molly muses, “You know you can get an embroidered coat of your own?” 

It wouldn't be the same. Nor would he wear something so flashy. It would draw far too much attention. 

“Nein… it is, ah, the…” He's not sure how to explain it, but it's all of it. 

It's textures and colors, and the fact that it's just different from most things he's ever been exposed to. It's intriguing and bright, it bleeds life from every shifting angle. There's patches of it that he isn't even aware of yet, because every time he has the chance to inspect it there's something new to find on it. It fascinates him because it's an ever shifting puzzle. An enigma, as strange and confusing as the person who wears it.

He just hands it over and Molly accepts it, slipping it back on with an effortless flourish until it settles on his shoulders where it belongs. 

“I should probably get the others up, we need to hit the road soon." Molly just grins and ducks back out of the room. 

Nott rouses at the sound of the door, blinking and yawning and Caleb is still caught up in the fact that these people keep caring for him even after everything he's done. 

 

 

 

\------------------------

 

 

 

The road from Alfield to Trostenwald is terrible. 

They are ambushed by bandits the first night, before they can even get to a spot that's suitable to set up camp and the Tiny Hut for the night. 

During the skirmish Frumpkin latched himself onto one of the arschlochs who was manhandling Nott, having snuck up on her without her noticing. Caleb had only seen the tail end of the encounter when the man grabbed the cat by the scruff, slammed him into the ground and all but stomped on the fey's spine. Frumpkin had scattered into a smattering of gold dust and Caleb had seen nothing but bleeding, pulsing red after that. 

The man was a pile of ashes before he could comprehend the spell on his lips. 

But now he's stuck, waiting until the next town to get enough components to bring him back, and Caleb feels like he's been thrown back to square one all over again. 

The next day of travel without the familiar is agony. 

His skin itches, there's a constant thrum of nausea in him, and he feels stretched thin with a burning irritation spurring in him. He feels like absolute shit and the others haven't missed it, there's no way they have. They keep coming to him with quiet reassurances, that same careful eye on him as always, but now it only makes his brow furrow and fists clench. 

They settle down for the night around a campfire that's warm and pleasant in theory and alight with the unsatiated hunger of flames, but he doesn't find the flicker of it comforting or reassuring. 

They're all here, settled around this pinpoint of light with him and he watches them. He cant explain the lace of irritability caught in a bramble of thorns in his chest. His head hurts and he wants to go to sleep, but there's a lot more things in his dreams to run from now. 

The others are laughing, talking loudly as usual and he grits his teeth. There's a burn under his sternum. A fire that mirrors the one between all of them, but far deadlier. It curls, twists, and billows, his skin prickling and nerves igniting across him. He can't explain it. He doesn't understand this growing anger. But it's not stopping and it's catching on his ribs, heating up his lungs and he stares at them. He stares at them and he wonders why he deserves to feel like this. 

_Why does he deserve any of this?_

What god did he forsake? What deity did he so displease that they would damn him to everything but the ability to feel happiness and warmth? Why were they allowed to smile and laugh and touch each other and not flinch and cry and cower?

Why is that fair? What did he do wrong? What is so fucking wrong with him that people want to control him? 

Why is this _fair_?

_Why is any of this fair?_

He lets the plate he's holding slip from his fingers, the untouched food tumbling to the grass with it.

“Caleb, what's wron--?” 

He whirls on that question, fire leaping under his skin. He _hates_ it, he hates how they keep asking it, as if they can ever understand. 

They _can't._

They can't understand any of this, and he can't force them to, and that makes him want to throw that plate into the fire, smash the ceramic mug between his palms until his hands are as bloodied and cut up as his chest feels. Until they can all finally see that bleeding black illness dripping from him. See that he's sick, that he's _rotting_ , that they should leave him to _die_ like some rabid animal on the roadside, because he isn't _worth_ all of this. 

He breathes heavily, eyes narrowed, watching them watch him and he hates it, _he hates all of this._

“What do you want to hear, huh?” He finally spits in a burst, the fire bright and hungry in the corner of his vision. 

He gets to his feet, stalking towards the lavender tiefling who asked it, fists clenched at his sides, nails cutting into his palms, teeth bared because he hates the way they all watch him like he's two steps from snapping. Like he'll drag a knife across his throat the second they stop looking at him. Like he's broken and wasted and worthless. Like he's _nothing_.

“You want to hear about how I let him fuck me for a plate of food?” He snarls, a hysterical laugh ripping its way out.

He's never said it out loud before.

Molly's eyes widen, the other's going rigid as well, still sitting around this happy facsimile of a fire and a life he can't ever be a part of. 

“That I did not say _no_?” He snarls low, heat snapping against his sternum and across his shoulders.

“That I agreed to it again right after?” And he watches Molly’s face fall at that and he thinks maybe they'll all finally understand they should leave him _alone_. “That some--,” He pauses and digs for that fire to fuel him. "Some part of me enjoyed it and I still do not know _why_?” He chokes on that, but he continues, chest heaving because he has to get this out of him. “That I let other people fuck me too.” 

He turns to each of them, the orange of the campfire leaping in his eyes, fueling that hollow billowing flame in his veins.

“Is that what you all want from me?” He's all but growling now, something feral and untamed, bristling in the fire light. “You want to hear about what it was like too?”

“Caleb…" Molly tries, but he just turns back to him, lip curled and limbs shaking. 

“You want to know how I cried and screamed and asked him to stop and he did not?” Molly flinches and Caleb takes another step forward, shoulders hunched and there's a heat at the corner of his eyes that is _damning_. “How I asked all the others to stop and they did not either?” 

He twists back around, facing the rest of them and that fire again, the flames that look like desperate fingers reaching up to the stars. 

“How they called me a slut and a whore and threw coins at me when they were done?” He bites out, cynical and wry, strained because his skull is pounding and there's a band wrapping around his chest and _tightening._

Some of them flinch at the hissed words and he watches their faces start to crumple and he wants _more_ of it. They need to know what this _feels like._

“You want to hear about how I would kneel and say yes and please until I did not want it anymore?” He flinches at his own words, face crumpling, but he flips it back into a snarl when there's another strangled attempt to reason with him from the tiefling behind him.

He turns and grabs Molly by the front of his coat, lifting him from where he's sitting with trembling fingers. There's protests from around him that rise above the crackles of flames and the minutia of night surrounding them.

“How they choked me and hit me and spit on me?” he sneers, teeth bared, “Do you want to know _every_ detail of how they fucked me too? About how it made me _feel_?” He leans in close, heart trying to beat its way out of his sternum, a pressure in his head that's pushing at the back of his eyes.

But he won't cry, he won't crack, he won't give them the _satisfaction_.

“Is that what you _want_ from me? ” his breath hitches and he tries to stop the jerky tilt to his inhales, but its hard when his lungs won't work and he can feel them all still just looking at him.

“Is _that_ what you want to hear, _Mollymauk_?” He hisses low and unwavering, not breaking eye contact, fingers curled into the lapels of that damn coat, trembling and shaking. “That I am just some fucking used and broken piece of shit?”

Molly says nothing, his eyes wide and recoiled as far from him as he can be with Caleb's numb and shivering fingers still caught in the front of his coat. 

They all say nothing. 

He knows they don't know what to say. 

And he's said far, _far_ too much. 

Someone touches the side of his leg and he recoils looking down to see wide, golden eyes and a film of water trapped in them. 

“ _Caleb_..." And Nott says it and it's all kinds of wrong from her. 

“Stop, please..." His chest hitches. “I-- I do not want your pity.” 

“It's not pity, Caleb, it's not.” She shakes her head, hugging herself. 

“You're not broken.” Molly interjects, eyes narrowed and pinched with everything but anger.

Caleb sneers, lip curling.

Because he _is._

Because he digs at his own skin and he can't sleep and there's this bone deep want for something to bring back that numb feeling he remembers craving. 

“You're _not_ , Caleb,” and Molly says it with so much conviction it's _terrifying_. 

He falters, dropping his hold on him, stumbling back, gaze darting to each of them, and they're still _staring_ at him. 

All of them. 

He wavers, his chest aching, and it feels like someone's reached into it, dug their fingers into his heart and lungs and pulled them apart. 

“You're not used or broken because of what they did to you." Fjord says, eyes hard and determined. 

But he _is._

He has to be. 

He can feel himself crumpling and he tries to stop it, slams at that damning feeling clawing up his throat. He can't show them he's weak, _he's not weak._

“What they did to you does not define you,” Yasha adds quietly beside Fjord.

But doesn't it? 

Doesn't what they did just make him _everything_ they said he is? 

There's a desperate strangled sob that he chokes on and he tries to stop it but he can't. His chest hurts so much and they're watching him and he can't, _he can't---_

“None of it defines you, Caleb,” she says again, eyes endlessly solemn.

He wants to believe that. He wants to. 

_Gods, he wants to._

He wants to believe that he isn't just some fucking murderer, a slave, a whore, _nothing_ , but he can't, because he is and he can't outrun these gnarled parts of himself. 

He tries to take a step, to get away, but he crumples into himself in the grass. The flicker of the fire coloring his vision as he folds over his knees and hides his face in his hands. He doesn't want them to ever see him like this, but he can't escape on legs that won't work. He can't get away from them this time. 

And there's things spilling out of him that he can't hold back, gasping cries that hurt and tear, and he thinks his soul is spilling out onto the ground with how much it aches. 

“I am-- I-- I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm _sorry_ \--" It's a prayer he shudders out into his palms, because he's so unbelievably and irreversibly sorry. 

He's sorry he hurt them. He's sorry they have to deal with him like this, he's sorry he almost did something irreversible to Molly, he's sorry he yelled at them, that he hated them, that he found drugs and used them as a crutch. That he wasn't immovable like Yasha, that he wasn't a better man, a _stronger_ man like his father, that he didn't fight back, that he let them hurt him, that he said yes, that he was _weak_. That he let strangers take him and twist him and fuck him, that he didn't let these people help him, that he hurt them--

_“Bitte_ ” he gasps out and chokes around it, stomach heaving and chest collapsing. 

There's a hand on his shoulder, a small point of warmth against his shuddering back. He doesn't shrug it off and there's another and another. He curls into himself further, there's too much to process here. 

He doesn't understand this kind of affection.

This gentle tenderness that doesn't hurt or sting or drag across his skin and tear him apart. They let him fall apart and cry without laughing at him or swiping up his tears to stare at them and leer. 

There's just warmth and kindness, and he's surrounded by it, crying even harder because maybe it feels like love. 

It feels like love and family and everything he doesn't deserve but everything that small, scared part of him always wants. That scared, teenage boy that burnt down his parents and his life, sundered any shred of human kindness he had ever known.

It feels like when his mother would hold him, enfold him in her arms when the outside world was too much, too loud, and he would hide against her and she would rub circles into his back. He would fall apart in the safety of her arms where he knew at least she wouldn't hurt him. 

She would tell him he was okay, that it was okay to cry, that he didn't need to be strong all of the time, that he was a smart, and brave, and kind boy. And he believed her because he loved her and she loved him. 

He cries because he misses her, because he _killed_ her, because it's his fault she's gone, and he never told her how much he loved her before he lost her.

He cries because these strangers he met in the belly of a bar, one in a prison, and another in a graveyard. These colorful spots of light that he never knew, these people that are _nothing_ like him, that aren't murderers and garbage and pieces of shit. These people that protect him, that care for him, comfort him, hold him, talk to him,and fight for him, might just _love_ him and he thinks he might love them back for it.

And he's scared of that. 

Scared of attachment and affection and love, because he knows he'll ruin it, he'll fuck it up because he was _never_ meant to be loved. 

But he wants it.

That comfort, that tenderness, that shoulder to cry on, to lean on, to fall on and rely on when he can't do things on his own. He wants it so badly. He wants all of it more than anything. More than the itch of a powder to numb his head or something to tear this fear out of him. 

He wants it and he doesn't know why he looked for it in all the wrong places. 

He cries because he's fucked up, because he's not okay, and he doesn't remember how to be okay. 

It's hard to remember a time when he ever was okay.

He's been clawing his way up this precipice since a man in fine robes said he was a bright boy and that he would be something great one day. 

He's been struggling and fighting, trying to survive in a world that has wanted to see him dead and beaten beneath it since he realized what pain and fear was. Since he realized that a mistake meant a switch in his back and enduring a disappointment that stung worse than the lashes. 

He think he's been trying to find something among all of it, something that isn't pain, anything that isn't torture, something that reminds him of his parents, of his mother. Hunting for so long he forgot what he was looking for. 

“Shh, Caleb...” Nott says and he picks it out amongst all of the light and rattling sound in his skull, "Just breathe.” 

She rubs circles into his back and he still thinks about his mother. About how he doesn't deserve her, how he doesn't deserve any of them. 

Because he is worthless. 

Because he is a murderer. 

“We're here…We're here.... We won't leave you alone again,” Jester murmurs softly and her voice sounds shakier than it usually is. 

He doesn't want to be alone anymore. He doesn't want to run anymore. He's tired... He's _tired._

“We'll always be here, Caleb,” Molly says amongst them all and he can't help the pathetic hitching sob at that, because he let him die once. He already let him slip through his fingers because he wasn't strong enough. 

“It's okay to grieve,” Caduceus reassures quietly beneath it all, barely a whisper that's nearly lost to the roar of blood in his ears, and something in Caleb _cracks_. 

He lets it all out.

Lets that grief tumble out of him in shuddering heaving gasps that rip through him, because he _lost_ something in that satin. He lost something and he doesn't know how to get it back. 

He mourns for that before, for that version of him that didn't flinch at the sight of gold and red. He lets out that spilling, stinging grief that's curled up in every part of him for a man that died in a room of red under a devil. 

He hunches forward, nails cutting into his palms and shoulders heaving, choking on this ripping, terrible ache caught in his chest, because it hurts, _it hurts so much_ and he wants it to stop more than anything. He pours out that pain, that frustration, that anger in heaving sobs that rattle in his chest and shake him. Digs his fingers into the soil and presses his forehead into the grass and he thinks he might be dying or dead, because his ribs feel like they've cracked and split. That everything caught behind them has slopped out under him in a tangle of black and rotting viscera. 

He cries because his parents are dead and he's not sure if he can ever bring them back.

He cries because he wants it all to stop. 

He cries because he's not alone. 

Someone bundles him to their chest and he curls into it, clinging onto them, fingers hooking into a coat lined with embroidery. 

He cries because he almost hurt him and he doesn't even remember why. 

“Bitte… I... I'm--” he breathes into a shoulder that's hitching in time with his own pathetic display. 

“Its okay,” Molly whispers and it's the smallest and most broken he's ever heard the tiefling sound, “it's okay, Caleb.” 

It's not. 

_It's not_. 

He is a shitty person, he is an asshole, he is less than a human. 

He doesn't deserve this. 

He doesn't. He doesn't deserve them, these threads of destiny that have twined around him, he doesn't deserve any of it. He will just make them rot, make them burn one day, even if he doesn't want to. He might even erase them one day and they don't even know. They don't even know what he is. That he's just some coward that wants to turn back the clock and fix his mistakes so he doesn't have to live with them. So he can make his parents proud. So he won't grow up to be some scared husk of a man. 

He shakes his head. “It's not.”

“Why not?” Molly asks, confused and still holding him and it's a mirror of before and Caleb can't help but feel pathetic for it.

“I am not a good person.” 

“I think you are.” 

“I am... not…” 

“Why's that?”

“I killed them..." he whispers, quiet enough he's sure only the tiefling can hear him.

Molly stiffens. 

“I killed them and I _wanted_ to do it until I did not." he says it louder that time, because now that it's out he can't stop. 

“...Caleb?” 

“I killed them...." he mutters the admittance against the colorful minutia of that coat and he knows the others are listening. 

“Who?” 

“Vater,” he chokes out, “Mutter,” and he can barely manage to get that one out alongside it.

“That wasn't you, Caleb. Someone took advantage of you, you can't blame yourself for it." And Beau hasn't spoken this entire time until now and he listens but he knows it's not true.

It can't be. Because he had wanted to do it when he did it.

_All of it._

He could have told Ikithon no. He could have told Lorenzo no. He could have not bought those drugs. He could have not sought out those people. He could have just said no… He should have just said no and he _didn't._

His parents would be alive. He wouldn't be like this. These people wouldn't be forced to deal with him. 

_Why didn't he just say no?_

“You can't blame yourself for something when you aren't given a choice,” she continues and his brow furrows at her conviction.

“But I was.” 

“Were you?” She asks, all kinds of skeptical and doubtful that has him confused.

He was given a choice… wasn't he?

Ikithon didn't force his hand, he just planted a memory and Caleb's own convictions worked towards a logical conclusion that his parents needed to pay for their betrayal to an Empire he would die for. 

But… had it always been like that?

He can remember being scared, being frightened, doing everything he could to live up to an expectation of him that was far more than he could ever be. The Caleb before that and after are blurred and he can't pick them apart. He's not sure if he was always loyal to the ideals or not and...it's numb, it's fuzzy, it's far away.

It's lost to time and a fear laced into the memories that blots out that perfection he prides himself on like smudges across glass. It's those stains, those gaps, that scare him far more than the perfect recall of a lash in his back or a harsh word and a harsher hand. 

Lorenzo gave him a choice too...

He's _always_ had a choice and he's always chosen poorly. 

He shuffles backwards, swipes at his eyes, breathes for a moment, hiding behind his hair, staring at his hands settled in his lap and ignoring the way the fire light dances past the barrier of auburn tresses between him and them. 

“Did you still want to try and eat?” Molly asks after a quiet moment, still kneeled in front of him. 

He thinks about the food he wasted because he was petty and childish and unable to control his emotions. Wasting food is dangerous, it's reckless, it could mean death out here. Shame settles along the back of his neck. 

“I am fine... " He pushes himself to his feet, wobbling before righting himself, eyes locked on the ground. 

He's afraid to look up.

They know now. 

They know nearly everything because he wasn't strong enough keep it locked up inside of him and he's not sure what he'll find in their eyes just yet. 

“I--” He stutters, unsure, “I need to-- I should... bring Frumpkin back..." is all he settles on, shuffling away from the fire and the silence that he's created in them. 

No one stops him and he's grateful they let him make his retreat. 

He scrounges in the spell component bag, sat at the edge of the camp, as far away as he can be, but close enough he can send a message or Nott can send him a message if something happens.

He digs around for any remnants of charcoal and incense but there's barely a handful. He finds a ribbon and a ring, a small piece of jewelry he thinks might belong to Molly, but there's nothing he needs. He tosses the bag to the side, burying his face in his hands again.

_He wants his cat back._

He curls up against a tree, spine pressed to the solid bark and hidden in his folded arms propped atop his knees.

_He just wants Frumpkin back_. 

He can hear them talking from here, but he can't make out their words. They know he's a murderer now. They know he killed his parents. They know he isn't worth their attention anymore. 

_He needs his cat back._

Someone raises their voice and he flinches from the sound of it. There's the sparking skitter of reprimands across his thoughts, a thousand different stern rumbles.

Because he's wrong, because he made a mistake, because he isn't perfect, because he's a murderer, because he didn't say no. 

They'll look at him far differently than they already did. 

Maybe they'll think he deserves this now, all of it, this lingering torment for an event that lasted all of two days and a handful of hours and shattered parts of him far more than Ikithon ever did. 

And maybe that's the worst part of it. 

He spent _years_ being broken down and molded into something useful for the Empire under Ikithon… but all it took was a day with Lorenzo. Less than that. It took hours. 

Just hours. 

He hunches into himself, a hysterical laugh bubbling past his lips. 

_He needs Frumpkin back._

Why-- 

He still doesn't--

It doesn't make sense--

Because why him? 

He isn't-- He wasn't-- He can't---

There isn't anything he can think of that he did to garner Lorenzo’s attention. He didn't… there wasn't… Yasha had to make a choice between him and Beau and she chose him but… 

Why was he ever an option? 

What did he do that made him stand out...like _that_? 

And it was only a few hours.

It was only _hours_.

Not days, or months, or years. Just a fraction of time in the grand scheme of things. But he can't erase them. He can't get rid of them and they've only grown worse and twisted into something unfathomable and far, far more than just a few hours.

~~At least Lorenzo has the luxury of being dead.~~

And he's stuck with that cut up timeline in his head. That bloodied and smudged reel that holds far too much clarity and meaning even with how _small_ of a section it is. 

It was only hours. 

All it took was hours. 

But it's a series of hours that wind into chunks that weigh so much more than they should. They're heavy and suffocating and they are more poignant than those memories of his mother smiling at him or the rare times his father would praise him.

It's a focal point that's shifted from a house that went up in flames to a bloodied tomb of satin. 

And there's such a distinct cut off from the Caleb that was just trying to keep his small friend alive in the bowels of that dungeon to the Caleb that handed over _everything_. 

They're not the same. 

They're two very different creatures and he can only look back on that other Caleb and think _stranger_. 

It's like looking at his reflection and seeing a gaunt skeleton of a man and thinking, _‘I don't remember how it got like this.’_

Except he does remember.

He remembers it so vividly that it's _always_ there. A walking nightmare that's always just behind him; one hand wrapped around his throat and the other over his eyes. 

He knows why his reflection doesn't match up...

But he still can't figure out if it was his fault or not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This version of Leo's Tiny Hut is like the one used in Critical Role not from the handbook. 
> 
> Thank you again for everyone who's stuck around this far and for anyone who's just now reading <3 I appreciate all of you for going on this journey with me <3


	19. Full Circle

Molly watches Caleb leave. His movements stilted and jerky, like he's pulled along on strings, a mechanical existence that ends with the wizard hunching away as if any of the people gathered here would think to ever hurt him. It's hard to gather his thoughts from where they've fallen, tumbled about, been shredded to pieces around him and drowned by the tears still drying on his coat. 

He glances to Jester, the tiefling the loudest among them, muffling broken cries into Fjord's shoulder, the half orc expending half of himself to comfort her and the other still staring off to where Caleb abandoned their fire with a furrowed brow. Nott goes to follow after Caleb and Yasha grabs her arm, the goblin whirling back around with a low snarl. 

“Give him time.” 

“He _needs_ us,” Nott growls back, tugging at her caught wrist. 

“Not right now,” Yasha shakes her head. 

“You don't know that,” The goblin bites out, “You don't know him like I do. You don't know shit all, none of you do.” 

“Nott,” He tries, he can see the trembles wracking her, tears still coloring her skin a murkier viridian. 

“What?” She snaps, poisonous eyes pinning him. 

“Let him have some space.” 

She scoffs, gritting her teeth and sneering, “Don't tell me what the fuck to do.” 

“Look, I might be an asshole with no tact but even I know that after that kind of shit I would rather be alone than have people all up my ass about it,” Beau states from beside the barbarian, an arm wrapped around Yasha’s shoulder. A nearly comical scene for their size difference but Molly can see the way it eases a tension in Yasha’s frame. 

“Fine,” Nott grumbles, wrenching out of the hold and settling back beside the fire, scowling at the flickering flames. 

No one says anything for a moment, still trying to process the landslide of information dumped at their feet. Molly knew some of it, most of it, speculations and extrapolations made, but hearing the words from the mouth of the man himself is nothing compared to his careful conjectures. The sight of that fear burning in bright blues, muddying the clarity there with an aggression born of a cornered animal, fingers twisted into the front of his jacket and teeth bared in a beast's bastion, a defence against a judgement that would never come for him. 

But Caleb doesn't know that. 

And Molly could see the regret there, the shame as he stumbled away, slinking off to collect himself and lick at his wounds and shore up a pride that he doesn't need to hide behind. He never needed to hide from them but Molly's seen the way injured animals isolate themselves. A misty myriad of instinct clouding their decisions and spurring them to skitter away to whatever dark corner they can find to either eventually heal or fade away. Because vulnerability for them means death. And Caleb is a man who is foremost afraid of his own weakness and perhaps that will be his downfall. 

“Maybe there's a positive in this,” Caduceus offers, folded arms propped up on his knees. 

“How?” Nott barks, glaring at the firbolg. 

“He told us things of his own volition,” Caduceus explains, rose tinted eyes glancing to each of them in turn, “Even if we already knew most of it.” 

“I didn't know about the food thing,” Jester whispers, “I knew it was something bad but I didn't think--” 

“It's okay, Jes,” Beau tries, reaching over to pat the tiefling shoulder but she flinches away.

“But it's not Beau,” She strangles out, face distressed and crumpled, “It's _not._ ” 

“Yeah…,” Beau chuckles, a wry shattered thing, retracting her hand and settling back against Yasha with her arms crossed, “It's not.” 

“Why would Lorenzo make him do that?” Jester asks, turning to them with pinched eyes brimming with water, “I don't… _why_?” 

“People like him like power…in all forms…” Yasha breathes, worrying at her palm. 

“Yasha, he didn't--,” Jeater starts, nearly afraid of her own words, “For the water too?”

Yasha says nothing and Molly avoids Jester's searching and sweeping gaze. There's a strangled cry from the tiefling that speaks volumes for the choked and oppressive feeling that's settled over their little party. 

“People are fucking shitty,” Beau says, with all the tact she usually has but there's an undercurrent of a rage that speaks volumes for how much she wishes she could rip the slavers apart if she got a second chance. 

“I don't know how to heal this,” Jester whispers quietly, knees drawn to her chest and fingers clutched around the symbol usually clipped to her side, “I want to help but this isn't--” 

“We'll do what we can,” he finally says, “That's all we can do.” 

“But what if it's never enough?” Jester sniffles, arms folding around herself, glancing to where Caleb left the reach of the fire light.

“It'll have to be.” 

“Do you think he'll ever tell us about who he killed…” Fjord finally says, the most silent of all of them, jaw tight and brows drawn down. 

“Maybe,” Beau drawls, sighing and kneading at her forehead with the heel of her palm. 

“You already know?” Caduceus asks, brows raising. 

“Yeah, it's uh… not the prettiest story.” 

“He can tell us in his own time,” he shrugs, because he doesn't need to know Caleb's past if the man doesn't want to tell him. He'd like to know everything he can so maybe he can help in some way but the wizard also isn't tethered to his past. Whatever he did, whatever led him to that moment, none of it matters anymore, it doesn't define him. 

“The best we can do is be there for him when he needs it,” Caduceus sighs, familiar words to what Molly has heard from Yasha. 

“We already did a fucking shitty job at that didn't we?” Nott grits out, avoiding all of their eyes. 

“That was… kind of my fault,” he admits, wincing, “I knew he bought something and I could have stopped him but I knew he'd find a way to just do it anyways.”

“What?” Beau barks, jerking to her feet. 

“There's nothing we can do to change the past,” Caduceus rumbles. 

“Like you said… he would have found a way to do it anyways,” Fjord mutters, carding a shaky hand through his hair and sighing. 

“Wait, no,” Beau throws her hands out, gesturing at him, nose wrinkled, “You knew he was _drugging_ himself and you said _nothing_?”

He fiddles with the periapt caught around his neck, he knew this was inevitable, that she'd be the one to come after him about it. She was protective over Caleb for whatever reason. Maybe some sibling complex, maybe something he didn't know, but either way she was quick to leap to his defense and pull him away when things went bad. 

“I honestly thought he wasn't, I couldn't see any classic signs of anything so I thought maybe he took my advice not to do it to heart… obviously I was wrong.” 

She sneers and he knows he's caught, “So you're saying you didn't think it was pertinent enough to mention ‘oh, hey, by the fucking way guys wizard boy might be hopped up on some killer shit and fucking around with people because he's a bit fucked up?’” 

“I didn't think it was a problem until it was too fucking late,” He fires back, shoulders ratcheting up and eyes narrowed at her. 

“Ha, yeah, well that doesn't erase all the shit that happened.”

“I'm sorry, okay, is that what you want from me?” He asks, dangerously close to having his voice crack because he's teetering on a ledge here and he's not sure what's at the bottom. 

“Apologies don't mean shit when you _lied_ to us.” 

“I didn't lie.” 

“Well you didn't tell the truth did you?”

“ _Beau_ ,” Fjord warns, “I know you're frustrated but we're all in the same boat. Being a dick to Molly won't help.” 

“It sure fucking makes me feel better,” the monk grumbles under her breath, cracking her knuckles and glaring off to the side. 

“We need to work on coping mechanisms for you,” Fjord mutters, rubbing at his jaw. 

“Fuck off, old man.” 

“Pretty sure I'm not that much older than you.”

“You sure sound like you're some middle aged dad.” 

“I do no--” Fjord cuts himself off with a surprised hiss of air because a familiar figure reenters the encampment. 

Molly watches, rapt and quiet, unsure as everyone else on what to say as Caleb sits, feet away from any of them, but he's still there at least. His head bowed and fingers pulling the edges of his coat tighter around himself, eyes fixed on the grass and then the fire. 

Caduceus manages to get him to accept a cup of tea but Caleb just holds it and stares into the liquid like it might tell him something important. When he finally takes a sip from it it's like a tension snaps away and Molly finally lets out the breath he was holding. The others seem to visibly relax as well and he meets Yasha’s eyes over the fire, the barbarian just nods and there's a thousand different messages in that that he's not even privy to. 

The crackle of the flame lulls the quiet along and fills the night with something other than the drone of crickets and croaks. He tilts his head back, the silver of the largest moon a silent beacon suspended against the dapple of starlight and he watches its dusky crimson-violet sister, ensconced beside it and nearly invisible.

\-------------//------------ 

He slinks back towards the firelight, slowly, measured, carefully, ears perked for the lull of voices and fearful of what they might say. He doesn't want to face them, shame hot and blanketing over the back of his neck because he couldn't keep himself under control. Fjord cuts himself off when he steps into the small encampment and he can't help but stiffen at the sudden hush, picking a place to sit far from any of them but close enough they don't have to fret about him going off alone in the dark.

And he wishes he had his cat, because his neck feels exposed and there’s no scarf and no weight or warmth to keep him tethered down. And so he drifts, the flicker of the fire the most prominent fragment of color he can see, and there’s just the echo of a hundred different crackling flames in his head. 

They know.

They don’t know everything yet, but they aren't stupid, they've seen the episodes, the catonia, the glazed eyed look the washes over him when he turns someone into crumbling charcoal and furling fat. 

They know he's a murderer at least. They all know what happened in that dungeon now too. They know a lot more than he ever wanted them to know. But they aren't reacting how he thought. No one is holding a blade to his throat, he's not tied up and interrogated, answers aren't being pried from him, no one's turned on him and demanded to know why he did it, how he did it, and when, any of the things he feared. They're just quiet. And maybe that's worse, because he can't read their minds. He's stuck trying to imagine what they could be thinking and none of his speculations are good ones.

Caduceus leans down to offer him a cup of tea and he accepts it with reluctant fingers, leaning away from the looming height of the firbolg. He stares at the tinted water, that steeped tea, probably brewed from that carefully cultivated garden atop a dead man's grave. He can't help but wonder what his own would taste like. If it'd be more like ashes and soot or regret. He knows it would definitely be bitter, _rotting_ , that if anything grew above whatever shoddy grave he finds himself sunk into that it would be nothing appealing. It'd be bloated and ugly, a festering infection in the earth. No brew would come from it, just poison. 

The taste of the tea is always oddly pleasant and immediately calming and he sinks into that feeling best he can. It only does so much to reign in that constant itch in the back of his head but it's better than nothing. 

He meanders about, in the throes of routine when he sets out the alarm spell and goes through the motions of conjuring the tiny hut. He settles down to sleep among them, numb and wrung out, but he doesn't close his eyes. He watches the stars through that hazy shield of arcane energy and he feels insignificant under the weight of their infinity.

\------- 

The next day is a quiet affair and he extends an arm for an overly eager, overly cheery Jester who scribbles on his wrist again but it's hard to focus on that when Frumpkin is still gone. He's eager to get to town, to Trostenwald, so he can buy what he needs to get him back. It's not until the late afternoon, nearly dusk, that they're rolling through the gates. 

And it is strange.

The reach of the war hadn't seemed to affect this place just yet, there's none of the odd hush and the odd absence of people like in Zadash. It's mostly the same, as if they never left, as if nothing happened between them making a mess of this place and leaving only to return to it like time hasn't continued on for this place until they stepped back through the borders. 

They find the tavern, the one that began this whole ordeal. The one he stayed in, two steps from bleeding out and barely alive thanks to a tiny goblin he was already willing to call friend. He's not so sure if any part of him is still the same as that other him. That Caleb that sat at this table, that stuttered his way through an introduction and warily eyed an offered hand. He would have never guessed he'd be back here now. And not like this. 

He could have never fathomed any of this. 

“Hey, I'm going to the jail if anyone wants to join me,” Molly pipes up when they're halfway through the door. 

Beau whips around a brow already raised, “Uh, you like being in prison or something?”

Molly just levels her with a hard stare. 

“Oh! Shit! Right, _Gustav,_ hah, yeah,” Beau scratches the back of her neck, “Woulda been pretty bad if we just left him there right?”

“You forgot didn't you?” 

“Wha? _No_ ,” She fumbles in her pockets for a moment, drawing out a small leather book, “I've got it somewhere in here.” 

She thumbs through it while Molly turns back to the rest of them and Caleb can see there's an agitation there that is wholly uncharacteristic. 

“Let's get something to eat first, maybe a drink or two,” Fjord settles into a chair with a sigh that's all too weary, “I'm sure Gustav can wait a few more hours.”

“You're probably right,” Molly relents, pulling out a chair for himself but the lash of his tail betrays his impatience. 

“Ah-hah!” Beau slams down the little book pointing at a circled note that says ‘get weird circus asshole out of jail for other weird circus asshole’, “I'll admit it's a bit dated now but I had it in there.”

“ _Charmed_ ,” Molly shoots her a tight smile, fiddling with the tankard that's been placed on the table. 

“Geez, what crawled up your ass and died?” 

“Oh, I don't know maybe the fact that if I hadn't come back you lot would have forgotten about him.”

“It's in my notes,” Beau pointedly waves the book, “We would have gotten to it eventually.”

“Beau's right, we wouldn't have forgotten,” Fjord reassures him. 

“I would have gotten him out for you,” Yasha says quietly from beside Beau, thumb worrying at her palm and avoiding all of their eyes. 

Caleb isn't so sure he would have remembered.

He hadn't really thought about it at all and he certainly isn't thinking about it now. Because he needs the supplies to get Frumpkin back and sitting at this table and talking about a jailed man that doesn't even matter in the grand scheme of things is not conducive to that. 

He only gets more restless the more he can feel the seconds dripping by. Every minute a large and yawning gap where he's all too aware of the absence of his familiar. Fingers drumming on the underside of the table, than the top, thumb idly digging and picking new grooves into the surface and he's trying to keep a tight line of control on that agitation but it's getting harder the more they just sit here and waste time and he doesn't have anything to do with his hands. 

Because he's down one cat and one scarf and he doesn't like how exposed the back of his neck is. 

“I am going to get my cat back,” he interrupts them, pushing his chair out and standing, not even sure what or where there conversation had been going because there's a buzzing in the back of his skull and it just keeps getting worse. 

“Wait, Caleb, I'll--” 

“I do not need a babysitter,” he bites out, cutting Molly off, taking a step back and resisting the urge to cross his arms and hunch into himself. 

He knows he lost their trust a while ago.

“I was just going to go as your friend, but if you're really that adamant about going alone…” Molly trails off, throwing a pleading look to Yasha who just shrugs. 

“I'll go with you Caleb." Nott jumps up slipping the mask back over the bottom half of her face. 

He doesn't protest her, because he could never look her in the face and tell her she couldn't follow him. He just nods and Nott scurries up, reaching into her pockets and pulling out a coin purse that she presses into his hand. 

“I know you might be low on coin.” 

He doesn't know what to say, he just clutches the collection of gold in his hand and tries not to show that his eyes are halfway to watering over something so innocuous. He shakes his head, brow crumpling and face scrunching before he manages to scrape himself back together. It's a simple gesture, something she's done many times now, but it's so much more now because… because she knows where his money nearly went, how it was eventually taken, but she doesn't care and she trusts him with hers. 

_She still trusts him._

“Come on, let's go get Frumpkin back." There's a tug on his hand and he follows her. 

It's easy to find charcoal, the Lockward General stocks it for the beginnings of winter but incense… that's trickier and they end up at Natural Remedies.

He thinks this might have been where Molly and Beau picked up that awful substance that had him thinking his skin was melting off, head turned to liquid, and made all manners of strange ethereal beast visible. And he's pretty sure they still don't know he took it and promptly discarded it. 

“Oo, Caleb, I'll just be a moment,” Nott pipes up at the entrance, tugging at his coat to get his attention. 

He glances over and there's a woman across the street, a fine fur coat and buttons of silver, a purse that's probably filled with all manner of shiny things on her shoulder and he knows what Nott plans to do. 

“Be careful,” is all he says because he knows either way she'll find her way over there, with or without him knowing. 

“Always am." She pulls her hood up further, completely concealing the slight glint to her eyes and slinks off, he loses her to the growing shadows of early dusk in a matter of moments. 

He pushes the door open, the immediate cloying scent of herbs and all manner of dried vegetation nearly overwhelming. But it's promising because maybe they'll have what he needs. 

He ignores that small voice, that tiny sparking impulse, that little itch, that buried miniscule thing that's burrowed under his skin and croons that maybe he can find other things here too. 

He's here for his cat. 

_Just_ his cat. 

He worries at his wrists, idly wringing his hands and wishing he had fur to tangle his fingers into...but that's why he's here. 

“‘ello,” the tan-skinned half elf waves, nearly lazily, from behind the counter. 

There's a glint to his eyes, a glaze that's just a hair noticeable, and Caleb would bet he's not exactly the most sober, but that's better for him. Maybe he can shirk some of the gold off the price. 

“I need ten gold pieces worth of herbs and incense.” 

The half elf nods but doesn't offer much more than that, just turning and gathering things from behind the counter. Caleb counts out the gold, glancing up to see the man is still occupied and palming a silver, muttering under his breath until it shifts. Maybe it's not much but any amount of gold he can save for Nott is better than nothing. The spell won't last but he'll be long gone before it wears off. 

He collects the bundle of components all but shoves the gold at the shopkeeper and beelines it back out because his eyes kept drifting to the strange collection of dried fungus behind the man and there was a constant looping thought of ‘I wonder what those do’ that he didn't quite like. A buzzing hum lodged in his skull that kept honing in on it all and wondering and _wondering_ and he hated it. 

Because Nott trusted him with her money and she left him alone because she _trusts_ him not to do anything.

He glances down at the smudged little eyeliner doodle on his wrist, a smiley face today, lopsided and one eye already smeared out of existence, courtesy of Jester as per a delicate routine she's decided to start. 

She and the others trust him not to do any of that again too. 

He's only a few steps outside the door when he hears it.

“Hey! Get the fuck back here!”

His attention snaps over to the shouting, eyes widening at the sight of two Crownsguard and Nott dodging around them, a handful of coins clenched in her fists. One of them manages to snag her by the back of her cloak, her hood falling and she snarls up at the grimacing man. 

Caleb can see it, the tension winding in the man's frame beneath the armor, the way he draws his fist back and he's already halfway to them, freeing a small piece of iron from the bag at his hip, own hand raising. The spell easily coming to him because this piece of shit thinks he can just do whatever he wants. 

The guard freezes in place, fist raised but harmless and suspending the still struggling goblin. 

“Hey, man what's the matte-?” The other guard pauses when he sees him, goes to shout something but Nott is slipping out of the paralyzed guard's grip, shoving the stolen coins in her pockets and scurrying towards Caleb, narrowly avoiding the second guard that swipes at her. 

“Both of you! Stop!”

Caleb drops the spell once Nott tears by him, turning on his heel and taking off after her, clutching the bundle of incense to his chest and hoping that any other guards nearby haven't been alerted yet.

“I'm sorry, Caleb!” Nott pleads beside him but he doesn't need her apologies, she was just doing what she would. 

As long as they don't get caught it's fin--

There's two more guards ahead of them, not yet alerted but starting to perk up at the sound of a commotion, honing in on them, and Caleb curses under his breath. Nott snags his free hand, tugs, and he follows, nearly tripping over his feet at the sudden turn but they're ducking into an alleyway and the harshness of dwindling dusk is dim here. The sound of heavy footfalls all too audible and he wants to disguise himself, disappear, but he's pretty sure he's not out of the guards line of sight if Nott's backwards glance and widened eyes are any indication. 

She's slightly ahead of him, faster and far more dexterous, and she could get away on her own, leave him behind and at least avoid the wrath of these guards who might be more lenient on someone they don't consider just a creature.

He's starting to list anyways, head getting fuzzy and vision warbling dangerously because he's barely nourished on his best days and his stomach empty on most and this kind of exertion is not what he had anticipated today. He stumbles, boot catching on uneven stone and he manages to right himself but she's even further ahead of him now, seeming to notice his falter she glances over her shoulder, face pinched and panicked.

“Caleb we need to-” 

There's the clatter of metal and the thud of a body hitting the stone as Nott ricochets off the guard that's stepped right into her path. Emerging from the darkened outlet connected to the sprawling path of alleyways and seemingly as heavily startled as they are because the man just blinks owlishly at the two of them. 

She scrambles up and Caleb takes a step back, reaching for the spell components at his side. The footfalls are deafening behind him, the guards apparently having not given up their pursuit. He manages to pull free a smudge of molasses, about to turn and slow the other guards and hopefully get away, when a hand catches his wrist. 

“Don't be doing none of that now.” 

Nott lunges at the guard holding him but the other two guards from before are there and grappling her, pulling her away and she spits obscenities and claws at them. 

“It was me! I stole, not him, just--!” 

“Quiet down." The man shakes her and Nott scowls but doesn't say anything more, just pushes at the hand seizing her arm. “We'll let Lawmaster Norda decide what to do with you two.”

His arms are being wrenched behind his back and he's trying not to let this affect him because he knows they won't do anything here, that they're just doing their jobs, but the all too familiar weight of irons on his wrists is nauseating. He catches Nott's eyes and he's trying to ground himself here, tries to keep a hold of that fragile reality, but the alleyway is dripping into shadows and the sounds of chains and breathing, and a rumbling laugh in his ear. 

“Can you at least leave him unchained? He won't try anything, I promise,” She tries and one of the guards sneers. 

“We don't take orders from goblins, nor am I taking any chances with any caster types.”

“Please,” she warbles and it's hauntingly familiar. 

Nott's begging...and his brow furrows because begging never works here, not when Lorenzo doesn't care if you grovel and kneel and sink desperate promises into the dark.

“Come on,” A voice says behind him, grabbing his upper arm and marching him across cobbled stone. 

He searches along it with his eyes, wonders why they don't notice the trails of glistening red in between the masonry or the way it's gone dark except for the faint crimson glow of a distant furnace. 

Someone's trying to talk to him but he doesn't hear it, not fully, it's muffled and far away and all he can feel is the bite of cold unfeeling iron settled on his wrists and hunger and exhaustion and a band of metal around his throat. He blinks and it's like a snap in time because he's in a cell and his breath starts to hitch.

He never got out. 

_They never made it out._

Gods it was just a dream, it was all some fucking idealistic _nightmare_. Because Mollymauk had been alive, he'd been _alive_ , and they'd all been free, and maybe that should have been the first indicator that none of it was ever real. 

And he can hear him, pacing outside that cell, a constant walking mantra of heavy footfalls, a beast held back by iron he holds the keys to, and Caleb can't ever get out of this cage. 

It was foolish to think he ever could. Naive to hope that freedom was real or anything he deserved. Stupid to think he wasn't still surrounded by wrought iron bars and pinned by obsidian eyes. Cold, unfeeling, leering through the gaps in the steely teeth and watching him, _always watching him._

He shuts his eyes against it, pulls his knees to his chest, heart slamming against his ribs as hard as he wishes he could against those bars until he's just a mirroring mess of viscera on the ground, broken and useless to whatever is planned for him. Grind his wrists into those metal cuffs until they break and bleed and spill out onto the floor because he can't do that again, he can't, he'll _starve_ first, he'll _choke_ first, he'll brain himself against the stone before those eyes and those teeth and those hands pull him out of here again. 

He won't let Lorenzo take him out of this cage again. 

“Caleb, you're not there,” A voice drifts in amongst the dark. 

There's someone else in here with him. Someone else caged alongside him and he wonders if they're just as desperate as him. If they're willing to die rather than be lulled out. 

If they think it's safer in here than out there too. 

“We're not there anymore.”

He opens his eyes from where's he's tried to hide from the inevitable. From that stalking predator that circles his prison and waits for him to speak, to trill, to _cry_. 

“Nott?” He warbles uncertainly because none of this is right. 

There's no dim burn of sinister vermilion in the distance, not the repulsive smell of a cell that's served as their home for far too long, there's no chains, there's no collars...he has his coat. And he glances past the cell bars, expects to see the grinning flash of gold, but there's nothing. He snaps his fingers but there's no answering puff of energy and no Frumpkin settling across his shoulders and he hunches inwards at that. 

“Are you back?” She asks and he squints at her because she seems fine, she seems unharried and as impossibly unchained as he is where she sits cross legged in front of him. 

He nods but he still glances over every inch of the cell, watching for a warping at edges, for a distortion, for an indication this is some trick, that this is a dream.

She gets up and paces, looking over the cell just as thoroughly as he is from his position pressed and curled up into the wall. He glances at his wrists, turns his hands over, wonders why he isn't still caught in the bite of metal and looks back up to her with a furrowed brow. 

“Norda said we'll have to stand trial later tomorrow… I convinced her to unchain us for now, but she said if we escaped the sentence would be steeper when they find us,” Nott explains, worrying at an ear with an idle hand and crouching down to inspect a rusted section of the cell door.

He breathes, the dark sliding against his vision, an oily slithering well of the unknown. He wishes he could see as easily as the others in the dark because he's not sure what could be lurking beyond the limited throw of light. The hall of cells yawning into a stretch of writhing, dripping nightmares beyond the safety of the bars. He watches it, tracks every infinitesimal movement, pins the writhe of it with his eyes and he hopes something won't come from stepping from the enfolded infinity of it. 

There's the thud of something heavy, a thunk in that blackened maw and it's everything. It's the footfall of a fiend, the tread of a beast, the approach of a dead thing, a shambling burned body with gold laced into its grin. 

He pushes back against the wall, the feeling of stone beneath him, surrounding him, pressing in on him and he tries his best to pretend like it isn't affecting him. He tries to ignore it all but it's _dark_ , it's so dark-- there's barely a sliver of moonlight, the cell isn't terribly large, and he's not sure when they'll be able to eat, when they'll be able to drink, when they'll be able to leave. 

And he wants to leave. 

He can't stop the tremors, the painful tension in his gut, the way his teeth are chattering from more than cold shivers, his breath hitching with each minute sound from outside the stalwart iron because it's all still too much. He doesn't miss the way Nott flinches with each uttered noise he makes and he tries to muffle it, keep her from knowing, protect her from his own mounting panic. Presses his hand against his lips and holds in that low whine, digs his teeth into the heel of his palm and focuses on the fire it brings to his skin.

He's fine. They're fine. It's not that dungeon. There's no table, there's no furnaces, they're not chained up. They're not--

He raises cautious fingers to his throat, other hand smothering the sound that leaves him when he flinches at the chill of metal. But it's just the amulet, there's no collar. It doesn't stop him from tightening his hand around the column of his neck, shielding his jugular, a constant pressure along his pulse and under his jaw that's not nearly grounding or protective enough. And he must look pitiful, curled up in the corner of the cell, muting himself with one hand and near to cutting off his air with the other but he doesn't want to be here, he never wanted to be trapped like this again. 

“I'm sorry, Caleb,” she mutters, her fingers curling around the bars and pointedly avoiding his eyes. 

She has nothing to apologize for.

She was doing what she needed to in order to satisfy that compulsion she had and if she got caught there's nothing more they could have done than get away. And they didn't quite succeed at that... but that wasn't her fault. She could have easily scurried her way up one of the buildings sills and to a roof-top to hide from the guards. If anything he should apologize to her. If it wasn't for his slow reactions, the exhaustion, and the light headedness he would have been faster, quicker to stop them and abscond with the money they would eventually need in tow. 

Coin is always a necessity after all, no matter the manner its obtained in. It means food, and shelter, and security. It could mean everything. And having nothing is a far too familiar sting he would rather avoid. 

She just shakes her head when he says nothing because he's too afraid to draw his fingers away from his mouth just yet. She rubs at her upper arm, ears pressing back and a frown pulling at her lips, eyes fixed on the stone, “I wish I didn't have this stupid itch, but I had to, I needed to, I--”

“You can not help it,” he finally manages in a shaking hush, eyes skipping over the reddened impression of teeth he left on his palm, palpitating at it with shaking fingers and clinging onto her words and the pattern of her breathing in the cell as his only distraction. 

“But maybe I can, maybe I just need to work harder at ignoring it,” she sighs and he can hear her rummaging for something at her belt.

The golden chain dangling from her waist is like broken glass in the suspended quiet. Her small snarl of frustration belays the absence of her flask but he still doesn't look up. Afraid to meet her eyes, fearful that she'll see something she shouldn't while he resists the urge to scratch at his wrists, to do something, to distract himself because he doesn't have Frumpkin here, he doesn't have a scarf to trap his fingers in. And there's a well of energy under his sternum and spiraling down his limbs like fire that's making it hard to concentrate the more he thinks about the walls surrounding him and the dark and the fact that he can't leave and that he's not sure when they'll get fed or if the others are coming for them. 

“An itch is an itch…" The irony of the words are not lost on him even as he says them, even as he gives in and rasps nails over the textured skin of his wrist. "And your impulse has kept us alive before, Nott, it has kept us fed.”

“It's also gotten us in trouble." She purses her lips, eyes flicking to his hands. 

He tries to still them, to stop, to go rigid and sit quietly, place his palms on the stone and keep them there beside his feet.

“Semantics..." he finally manages in a hushed voice, fingers curling into trembling fists atop the floor, nails biting crescents into them that _sing_. 

She laughs and it's not amused, it's worn out, its thin and dry and grating and she's watching him with a furrowed brow, ears pressed back and he avoids her eyes, the sharpened gold. 

“Why won't you just fucking be mad at me for once?” She asks and he startles at the bite in her voice, at the sheer exasperation, at the exhausted tremor in it among the lace of anger, of fear, of a weariness he doesn't understand the entire origin of. 

“What would that accomplish here?” He frowns, frustrated and worn out by their new predicament. She only seems to get more agitated by his question and gods, he wants to dig his fingers into his skin pull it back, get even a fraction of that burn out of where it's festering in him. 

“I--I don't know...but this isn't fair to you." She throws a hand out, gesturing to the wrought iron bars. “I shouldn't drag you down with me, so at least get a little fucking angry.”

He is angry. Not at her. But he's angry at this place, at himself, at the fact that he can't fucking sit still because it feels like he's igniting under the weight of this cell and the bars. He's never been good at just sitting rigidly, stoically, his fingers constantly moving to tap against each other, against his thigh, run along the gilded edges of a crisp uniform that defined every part of him. The sharp reprimand caught in his skull, the prickle of a distant voice that tells him to stop moving. 

“At least--" She huffs and he glances back up to see her kicking at the ground and throwing her arms out. “At least _something_ , Caleb.” She hunches, wrapping arms around herself, eyes pinched and drawn. “At least recognize that it's always you sacrificing more for me than I do for you.”

He frowns and her simmering frustration only grows with his continued silence. He doesn't know what to say to make her stop, to soothe whatever turmoil is caught up inside of her. He's not sure what she wants to hear from him here and so he just watches it boil over. 

“At least tell me that this isn't fair, Caleb!” He tries not to flinch back at the sudden pitch in her voice, pinning every action she makes with wary eyes because she's throwing a fist into the cell wall and growling. It's everything like Beau, but _nothing_ like her. "That you're worth more than me getting you arrested or hurt or nearly killed..." her voice wavers, turned choked and quiet. 

He still says nothing and she just huffs, low and agitated. He's not sure if it's at him, their situation, or everything culminating as one. She draws her fist back and he can see the faint glisten in the dim moonlight that manages to make it into the cell. Her shoulders fall, the fight bleeding from her as quickly as it began and she curls a protective hand around her injured one, looking up at him with eyes that are pinched, and pleading. 

“Why do you do everything for me but you won't let me do anything for you?” She asks, tremoring, words haunting and suspended in the gap between them. 

“Nott... I--”

“No, don't pretend like I'm stupid, that I don't notice you constantly trying to protect me,” she cuts him off and he frowns, “I'm my own person, I don't need you to-- to-- I--” 

She's grasping at words now and he can see in the way that her shoulders have ratcheted up that she's trying to hold in even more, her eyes glistening and threateningly watery. “I didn't need you to trade yourself over for me…” She breathes and it settles against his chest with a weight that she could never comprehend. “I didn't need you to go up on that table for me, Caleb." He says nothing, stuck inspecting his fingers, curled loosely, limply atop his crossed legs. He had to go up there every time. He… there was no other option. She was sick, she was dying, she--she didn't deserve to die in the dark down there, afraid and chained up like an animal. And he's been through torture. He knows what the drag of a knife feels like, the tear of a hook into his shoulder and his gut, he knows what it feels like to be methodically pulled apart in many different ways. He knew he could take whatever they threw at him when he traded her time for his own. He wasn't worth the luxury of sitting in that cell and listening to her fade away... 

“I don't need you to throw yourself onto a fire for me every chance you get. I don't need you to lie down and let me walk all over you…" She breathes, a shuddery, shaking thing. “That's not how this is supposed to be. I'm supposed to look after you just as much as you look after me,” she whispers, “I promised myself that when I found you in that cell.”

He still says nothing, fingers tracing over the bandages on his arms.

“I didn't--” She shakes her head and scans the ground for something. “I know what it's like to be alone. For the rest of the world to hate you... I know what it's like to hate parts of yourself too. And I--” She pauses, glancing to him. “I don't want anyone else to ever feel that way...I don't want you to feel that way anymore, Caleb.” 

Caleb swallows thickly, chin dipping, avoiding looking at her now.

“Because it hurts, it _sucks_ , there's nothing good about it and it just makes everything shitty and dull and lifeless." She bites out the words with such vitriol he nearly recoils. “But then I found you...and you seemed as lost as me…” She sighs, shifting her weight and the answering clink of that gold chain clipped to her waist breaks the silence for him. “You seemed just as scared and unsure. You seemed sad…and _lonely_.”

He remembers that cell. He remembers being stuck in there for days. The ability to get out right there, just at his fingertips-- because those people didn't know how to handle mages. A part of him thought maybe he should just stay. That at least he was fed, at least it was warmer than the bite of winter in the streets and the forest. That it was safer in a cage than whatever unknowns he had to face out there, alone and with barely an inch of the talent he used to wield. He hadn't even really fathomed escape until she was tossed in.

Because he's always been a coward, always been scared of things that are bigger than him. And the world is something he can't face on his own. But she had offered him a hand. Seen a scared man in the corner of a cell and thought ally instead of prey, and he can never thank her enough for that. 

“You looked at me and you saw a _person_ , Caleb. And I knew you were worth more than all of those fucking people combined,” she laughs and he wonders if she means the rest of the world as a whole, because he's not worth more than even the slavers that clapped them in irons, let alone a random beggar on the street. 

“Maybe it's selfish… maybe I wanted someone to finally just see me and not-” she gestures to herself lip curling and it's still disgust in her face when she refers to her appearance. He wants to smooth that wrinkle out from between her brows because she shouldn't hate herself so much, because she's nothing like him. “...maybe I wanted to be around someone like Yeza. Someone willing to talk to me, to teach me things I would never learn otherwise.... and you taught me _magic_ , Caleb,” she smiles, wide and watery, “You taught me that I'm more than just-- just _this_. That I'm capable of things I never thought possible.”

That wasn't just him though, she's smart, sharp witted, quick to learn and quick to pick up on things. Magic nearly came easy to her. He barely showed her anything... 

“Then we met these people,” her voice is wistful and disbelieving, "and it's so much more than I could have imagined.” 

He couldn't have imagined this either. He's still not sure what parts of it he's more surprised by. Their fierce loyalty to him, that he still doesn't quite understand, or his own development towards them. That quiet growing devotion that he wishes wasn't there but keeps getting more complicated the more time wanes on. And after everything he's not sure how easily he'll be able to disentangle himself from them in order to achieve everything he needs to… and he can't help but feel like he's failed his parents in some way for that. 

“They're family,” she admits and her finality is terrifying. 

Because he thinks they might be. And he doesn't know what to do about it. The only other family he's ever had he burned away or he couldn't follow any longer because too much was asked of him. He's not even sure what became of Astrid or Eodwulf, but he fears the worst sometimes… He's afraid he might turn this new family into ashes as well. 

“And I know you think you aren't worth anything, that you're garbage, that you're worse than dog shit, but you're not." She wrings her hands, voice dipping into solemnity and resignation. "I don't know how to get that through to you, I don't know how to explain to you that you're worth protecting, that you don't owe me anything. That these people could be your family too.”

“I don't know how to show you that you can let us help you sometimes." She finishes, looking up at him and he meets her eyes and there's so much caught between them that he wishes he could say. Most of them are gratitude, but a number of them are apologies. 

Because it is his fault. He should have just accepted his position in things, not fought back, laid down and obeyed. Because she lost a part of herself in that dungeon for his defiance. 

“Nott... you lost a finger because of me. I do not think I will ever stop owing you anything.”

“What?” Her face scrunches and there's the sharp spike of fear skittering up his spine, because she wouldn't have known. 

“I--” 

“That wasn't you, Caleb. You're not the one that cut off my fucking finger. That was them. That wasn't your fault.” 

Yes. Yes it was. 

“Everything they did to us, that was them, not any of us.”

He says nothing in response, because she's wrong, he knows she's wrong because he remembers doing it, remembers seeing the consequences of his actions, that lingering fallout still glaring him in the face, forever immortalized on her hand. 

Nott just sighs, settling against the far wall and he bows his head and thinks about everything else he's done that he can't erase.

\----------

Food is brought after a while of stalwart silence that he's too afraid to break. It's plain, simple, just bread hardened and spotted with the very beginnings of mold, but it's better than nothing. He picks at it, listens to that little voice that worries and frets, that tells him to eat even when everything tells him not to because he's not sure when the next meal will come. He's not sure what he'll have to give away for another mouthful of food after this free one.

He stares at the half eaten piece in his hand, turns it over, inspects it and watches it because this-- this is what he traded all of it for. 

A bite to eat. 

A platter he never touched in that room, settled alongside the blood stains. Innocuous, harmless, worthless in it's own right but it meant fucking everything. 

Gods it-- He--

He handed himself over for a commodity, for a _dish_ , for a few pieces of hard tack tossed in a cell. And maybe the worst part is… He would do it again if it meant _survival_. The bread crumbles between his fingers at the realisation and he'd rather do anything than eat anymore. He glances up to Nott, the goblin tucking into her own meager meal with a fervor. 

She knows. He told her. He told all of them. He told them so much more than he ever wanted to. 

“Nott… I…” 

“Hm?”

_She knows, she knows, she knows._

It's caught up in his head and he can't stop it. She already knew he was a murderer and didn't judge him for that. She knows what he did with Lorenzo and the others and he still can't find judgement on any line of her face. 

She knows and she doesn't hate him. 

So maybe… maybe he can finally say it to someone. Get those three words off his chest that she asked him for what feels like an eternity ago. A confession she waited for with wide eyes that he choked on because the words were far too heavy, far too sickening to utter aloud. It was too much too admit, too much to bring into the light and pick over.

“Caleb?” She tilts her head, ears flicked forward and eyes wide, searching and he still can't find derision there, the flashes of red bled out and replaced with liquid golden empathy. 

“Ja, I--” 

There's so much he wants to tell her. Because he needs to tell someone. He needs to shovel this out of him because it's still there and it still hurts. And she won't judge him. She won't… She's never done that before.

Even in the corner of a far different cell; alone, cold, bruised to shit and all too vulnerable, she just spoke to him. Didn't ask any questions as to how he landed himself there, just explained why she was there until he eventually returned the favor and they quickly learned they had more in common than those that shared their skin and form outside their cage.

They were both outcasts, misfits, bedraggled and homeless vagabonds caught beneath the boot of a guard that had no sympathy for the folk who fell and scrounged in the dirt for any scraps of survival they could find. 

They were both scavengers in a den of wolves that would see them eaten alive.

“I…" He stops, breathing heavily, the words right there but caught and twisted up behind his teeth.

“He--” He just needs to say it, just get it out there, but gods it's so much harder to get that poisonous sentence from his head and out into the air. 

“He…” He can feel his face crumpling and he pulls his knees closer to his chest, hunches and tries to make himself smaller because maybe it'll make it easier to admit it, to just finally say it. 

And be can see Nott is confused, that she's trying to puzzle together what he might say. 

“He--” He chokes on it that time, shoulders hitching and gods it's right there and she's staring at him, eyes wide and pleading and face all kinds of open and kind and he just has to tell her, he has to tell someone, he has to say that little phrase so it can settle around him and get picked apart instead of festering in that blackened void. 

He just has to say it. 

He presses the heels of his palms into his eyes, a low frustrated growl rattling his chest, because it's just words. It should be easy. It's just breathing and syllables and his tongue maneuvering around air to make some semblance of sense but it feels like the hardest thing he's ever done. 

It takes him a few minutes of hiding his gaze in his hands and inhaling and exhaling. Slow, measured, only occasionally hitching, focusing on the silence between them, rehearsing the little sentence in his head over and over. It's simple. It's three words. It's just three words. It's three words that mean everything and more. It's that delineation between victim and survivor and he's not sure where he stands on that line anymore. 

It's three words. 

He kneads at his brow, fingers trembling, looking up at Nott, her eyes molten gold and dripping with empathy. Two pools of silent understanding and the fact that she would _never_ hurt him even if she thinks her actions have. He sits in that silence, unwavering, eyes caught by hers and the gap between them feels both infinitesimal and larger than existence. 

It's just three words…

It's just-- 

He huffs out a frustrated sigh, shaking his head, clenching his eyes shut and opening them again. As if Nott will disappear in a puff of smoke from that far wall and leave him alone in here, abandoned and lost in the dark. 

But she's still there… and she's still waiting. 

He opens his mouth, lips moving before he can stop them, air pushing past parted teeth and he can't stop it all as it presses past those carefully constructed walls and into the dark.

“He raped me....” it leaves him in the smallest whisper he can manage, but it's still the crash of a tidal wave against his ears in the quiet.

It's out. 

It left him. 

It's finally just hanging. A dangling thread turned to a guillotine in her hands because she could turn on him. She could tell him it wasn't, that he agreed to it, and he would let her because a part of him still thinks that and he can't figure out why. 

And he needs to explain it to her because maybe she'll-- maybe she'll tell him why--he might even validate that doubt, tell him why he deserved all of it and he's not sure which one he's after more anymore. 

“But he-- I-- He gave me a choice and I--” He fumbles, skull on fire and stringing together a coherent sentence turned to a momentous task. 

“What was the choice?” Her voice is quiet, solemn, carefully measured and she doesn't break an inch of eye contact with him. 

_You. Food. Safety._

He remembers that leering grin, sharp and highlighted in glinting dripping red from the furnaces, the devil on his wooden throne and a deal locked between those teeth that he had to accept. 

“Sleep with him or… or starve.” 

Nott makes a sharp sound, a quick inhale of breath, her eyes slipping closed and Caleb can feel himself faltering because-- because maybe this was a mistake, maybe he shouldn't have told her anything more than what she already knew. 

“That's not a choice…,” she finally breathes and her voice wavers dangerously, “That's an ultimatum.” 

A small broken laugh leaves him, gaze turning to the ceiling above them.

_‘I'll take the deal.’_

_‘Me.’_

Two different phrases, spoken at different times, both equally damning, and both an agreement to something unthinkable. But an agreement all the same. 

“I still agreed to it,” he admits and the words slide like venom in his mouth.

She shakes her head and there's the beginnings of distress creeping in, squinting her eyes and making her face scrunch, “That's not how that works, Caleb. Just because you say yes it doesn't automatically not make it what it is.” 

She gets up and he hunches, watching her, wary, concerned, not afraid of her but fearful of… something. That she might walk further away, go to the far corner and abandon him here. That she'll leave him in the dirt like everything else. But she comes closer, she kneels in front of him, unwraps his trembling hands from around his ankles, holds them in her own and _looks_ at him. 

“He _forced_ you,” she says, every ounce of bleeding conviction threaded into her voice. 

But…

“Caleb,” Nott breathes, lips pressed into a thin line, her hands clasped tightly around his, “There was nothing about that situation that allowed you to hold any ounce of power.”

He knows. A part of him knows that.

He knows because he knows what it's like to be powerless.

It's the tang of iron that constantly sits on the back of his tongue, the feeling of fingers tangled in his hair, and breath against his neck. It's red and satin and chains and the dark. 

It's fire and screams and the burn of ash down his throat, leaping columns of light against a frame of darkness, casting the stars and the moon and his world into ruin. 

And it's always in the dark. 

“He knew that. He knew you couldn't say no,” she continues and he watches her face morph and fully crumple, there's tears frothing at the corners of her eyes and he thinks his might be doing the same with how blurry she's become. 

“Nott, I--” 

“No, Caleb,” she cuts him off, fingers tightening around his, threading through his own, “You have to understand that what he did was _wrong_ , that it's abominable, and anything that you think you allowed to happen to yourself after… none of that was your fault either.”

‘None of that was your fault.’ 

He picks apart the familiar phrase, heard from two different voices now, and what feels like forever ago when his past was pried from him. Traded over for access to a library that was useless to him, handed over for _nothing_ , the choice to share it forced from his hands like everything else. 

And he remembers being afraid of her decision once she knew, holding his hands in a quiet prayer and asking her if they were okay still and she had told him everything he already knew. That what he did was despicable, _unforgivable_. But then she told him it wasn't his fault, even though every inch of him knows it always will be. She told him that he had to forgive himself first...

_‘It wasn't your fault. And I'll keep telling you that until you believe it.’_

He grasps at her words with trembling fingers, the ones uttered now and the ones long past, inspects them for cracks and chips because it can't be true. It has to be his fault. Everything that's happened to him has to be his fault because then who's else is it? 

It has to be. Because he--

“None of it,” she continues and he's caught in the way her hands have melded with his, her smaller ones somehow far larger in presence than they really are, comforting, maternal, “Even if you were the one that got yourself high, even if you propositioned them, even if you said yes in the beginning, even with all of that, they should have been the ones to stop. _They_ are the ones at fault. You were compromised, you were _hurting_ , and they took advantage of that because they're shitty people.”

But he's ‘shitty people’ too. 

He's part of that lot. He's one of them. He's a coward and a murderer and something that belongs in this festering underbelly of rot and carrion. A _parasite_. A leech that's feeding off of these people until he gets what he needs and discards them. He's so much worse than those ‘shitty people’ because he pretends that he isn't one of them. 

“None of it was your fault,” she says it again and he can feel something chipping and faltering, a crack splintering up the side of that conviction lodged in his chest and it's terrifying how easily a simple sentence is damaging it all. 

“I--” He stops, halts, thoughts skittering. 

Studiously picking over the things she's said, turning them over, flipping the stones like he might find the insidious truth scrawled beneath them, but there's nothing, no hidden meaning and he stares at where she's still holding his hands. Tries to string those words into something that doesn't feel like it's fragmenting him into pieces. 

“Can you say it?” She asks and he meets her eyes again, “You don't have to… but I just want to know that you can admit that it wasn't.”

She's just waiting, watching him, and he can try for her…

“It wasn't--” 

He hunches over, pulling his hands out of hers, skull pounding, wrapping his arms around himself, fingers digging into his sides. 

“It--” He tries again but grits his teeth over it, biting down on that phrase before it can escape, killing it where it tries to wriggle its way out. 

It's caught up in that tangled net, the one that's laid like a snare over his perceptions and he can't cut it free. It's slipping, it's starting to fray, he can almost _feel_ it, but it's still trapping things down there. 

It's holding him back with the ruins of a house and charred bodies that he _made_ , of a childhood that is so faint and distant in comparison to everything else it feels like a dream. 

With a nightmare, a bleeding hell of tanned skin and blood and teeth that he agreed to. 

Of a haze, a foggy addled timeline that's still so pockmarked and chipped he can't remember where it ended and began, just that he started it with a pinch of powder. 

All of it screams and writhes down there, in the pit of him, trapped around his ankles like satin sheets and crooning ‘your fault’ and he doesn't know how to cut himself free. Even when they hand him a blade… it always seems more logical to turn it upon himself then on those things holding him down. 

“It's okay… just… take your time,” She pats his knee, his hands retreated and withdrawn to curl close to his sternum. 

He doesn't know how to do this. It was so much easier before. To just push it away, to just slowly implode, to try and forget, to never admit it, to just silently let it all grow inside of him and shamble around like he was some vague semblance of fine. 

This is so much worse than that.

Pulling it into the light is like tearing open parts of his soul and letting others work them over however they please. Like vultures drawn to that carcass he doesn't even recognize anymore. Every second is _agony_ and he doesn't want to relive any second of the things he's done or that's been done. He wishes he could forget, that his mind wasn't as infallible as it is. 

That the smell of smoke wasn't perfectly recorded, the sound of them crying for help, the moment he realized he killed them and he couldn't ever get them back, the tang of blood, of leather, the rasp of skin across his, of teeth in him, the sound of his voice, of agony snapping up his spine, being smothered into sliding sheets, the constant weight of fear and helplessness and pain and-- and--

_“Nott_ ,” he chokes out and he's crumbling apart and maybe she can stop it.

Because he said it. He told her. He told _all_ of them. He can't take it all back anymore. It's real, it's all too real. It won't stop looping in his head and he doesn't want to keep reliving any of it.

There's arms around him and she can't fully encircle him but she does her damndest and she isn't repulsed by him, she isn't refusing to touch him or sneering at him. 

“Sh, I got you...” she whispers into his shoulder and he selfishly clings to her. 

He kept her safe at least. She's alive. She lived. She's here still. Maybe all of it--maybe it was worth it. He's not sure anymore, not when it feels like this. 

And he's not sure why it even hurts this much. Why he keeps coming back to it. It was a sacrifice to make for her, for them, and he made it and it was _done_. It happened and he should be able to just cut that part out of his mind, label it ‘necessity by survival’ and file it away forever. He's done things to survive, nothing like that, but it's not a foreign concept to make sacrifices to live. Maybe he's just not strong enough, maybe he's never been strong enough to do what is necessary. 

Maybe if he had been stronger he would have just told Lorenzo no. Maybe he wouldn't have gone to that shop, bought that powder and fallen into it and into the arms of strangers who didn't care but his head told him that it would somehow help. 

If he was stronger Molly wouldn't have died, if he was stronger Jester and the other's wouldn't have been taken in the first place, if he was stronger he could have stopped the members of that caravan, if he was stronger he could have killed Lorenzo in that dungeon… if he was stronger… if he was _just_ a little bit stronger.

Why isn't he--?

Why wasn't he…?

“Why wasn't I strong enough?” He breathes out, a question more for himself than her.

“No, Caleb, no…” she mutters, shaking her head, fingers curling into the back of his coat. “You're plenty strong. You're one of the strongest, smartest people I know.” 

“Yasha…”

“You're not Yasha, no one is Yasha except Yasha. You can't define how this affects you based on someone else. That's not how any of this works.”

“But I did not fight back. I--” 

“Caleb, look at me,” she cups his face in her hands, tilts his gaze back up to meet hers and he lets her, “You were scared, you were frightened. People freeze up, _I_ freeze up in bad situations. Does that make me weak?”

“No...”

No. He would never think of her as weak. She's Nott the _Brave_. She's everything but weak.

“Then why does it make _you_ weak?” She asks, still holding the sides of his face and it feels like when his mother used to comfort him and there's a damning heat at the corners of his eyes, vision swimming. 

“Because I should be-- I should not … I shouldn't let that--”

“You didn't let anything happen, Caleb." Her thumb smooths across his cheek and catches the track of tears he didn't even notice. “You can't help what was done to you or how you reacted in the moment.”

“But I-- I…” 

He doesn't want to tell her this part. 

“What?” 

“I--” He gestures, tries to make her understand with the motion of it rather than the words that won't come out. “I… when he… later... on the road south…” 

She frowns and nods. 

“I reiterate,” Her voice is steely and determined, “You can't help your bodies reaction to things. It's a body. It reacts however it will. It doesn't mean anything when it responds.”

He bows his head, brushing her hands away from his face and while a part of him misses the weight of them, the warmth of her palms, he wants to hide away from her scrutiny. 

“Caleb, look,” He hears her sigh, a wavering thing that trembles in the air, “I mean this in the best way, but you're not perfect. You aren't infallible. You're human. You're just a human and I think you have to remember that sometimes.” 

“You aren't some immovable object or a tool or a piece of shit like you tell yourself sometimes. You're a person. And you're not worthless. You're not weak. You're not a coward.”

He is… he's always been a coward. He always will be. 

“Maybe you're cautious. Maybe you're fearful. And maybe you have every right to be after everything the world has thrown at you.” 

Does he though? What gives him the right to be anything? 

“But you're also _smart_ , Caleb. You're caring, you're funny when you want to be, and you make these people smile and laugh because you're so much more than what you tell yourself." She grabs his hands in hers again and he stares at that connection with wide eyes. “You're so much more than what all of those other shitty people ever told you that you were. You're far more than what they tried to make you.” 

“You are _Caleb Widogast._ ” Her fingers, small and child-like compared to his, one missing, and clasping his all the same, as if his aren't stained with soot, with dirt, with blood, with ashes and rot. “And that means you are _someone._ ” 

“Maybe you're not even sure who that is yet…" She continues and he glances up to see her smiling, eyes bright and haloed in the throes of silver moonlight like an angel. “Maybe you're still trying to figure out where you stand in the world and that's okay.”

“I think all of us are too. But we can all help each other get there,” she nods, determined, eyes pinched, “ _Together._ ” 

She reaches up, slowly, carefully, projecting every intent and motion she aims to do and he doesn't flinch when she tucks a stray lock of auburn behind his ear, “And you're worth every ounce of affection and love we could ever show you.” 

He chokes on the feeling lodged in his chest, the welling suffocating burn closing his throat and he doesn't know what to do with it all so he just lets it tumble out again. She draws him in, her smaller size making it an awkward affair but he doesn't care because it's comfort and he hides his face against her shoulder and she wraps her arms around him best she can. A hand smooths through his hair, fingers curling through the strands and instead of the skitter of fear it feels like home, it feels like his _Mutter_ , like he's just a scared little boy hiding in her arms again and he clutches at the her cloaks with trembling fingers like she might disappear into flames as well. 

“We'll be here for you,” she whispers, her chin tucked atop his head, “we'll always be here even when you don't think we are.” 

He doesn't know what to say, he would never what to say to that kind of promise. None of them owe him anything, he's done nothing to garner that kind of loyalty from them, that kind of compassion. 

Somehow he ends up curled on his side, head pillowed in her lap, her periodically carding her fingers through his hair and there's something oddly soothing about it. There's nothing to fear here, not when she's keeping an eye out, and he finds himself lulled to near sleep despite his reservations about closing his eyes against the pressing darkness. 

The clang of the door opening at the end of the hall of cells sends him blinking awake and sitting up. There's the low familiar chatter of the group that follows, Norda’s voice among them, and the clink of keys is all too sharp in the low din. He peers up at them, blinking at the flood of candlelight and squinting at the familiar faces. 

“Hey, assholes,” Beau greets, arms crossed and Caleb's never been more grateful to hear her insult him in all his life. 

“So, how did going to buy incense end up as a trip to jail?” Fjord asks, a brow raised and hands on his hips. 

“My fault…” Nott mutters, hunching into herself.

“ _No_ ,” Caleb affirms, “It was both of our faults.”

He ignores the pointed look Nott gives him in response. 

“I don't care who's fault it was,” Norda says, gesturing to the gaggle beside her, “these people paid your bail and I want the lot of you out of my jail.”

She unlocks the door and swings it open with a huff, arms crossed and tapping her foot on the ground. 

Caleb slinks out behind Nott, head bowed, glancing down at the dwarf who's watching him with narrowed eyes. 

“Do we get our things back?” He asks quietly, afraid she'll say no, that she'll deny him the spell components he's managed to recollect, that she won't let him have the materials to get his cat back. 

“Yes,” her voice is softer than he expected it to be, a small concerned crease between her brows, “we're not barbarians, they're still your belongings. You won't get the stolen gold back though.”

“That's fair,” Nott sighs. 

Caleb sighs, a tension bleeding from his shoulders, swamped in immense relief. He can get Frumpkin back tonight then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If Nott _ever_ dies I will riot. I will fight the whole world for that goblin to live.
> 
> Full disclosure some parts of this might be choppy because I might have been typing it, gone to do some work, left the doc open on my phone (because I type on my phone since its easy to just pull it out, slam down stuff when I'm inspired and save it) and pulled it back out to see Id somehow deleted entire chunks and managed to save the document in that state.


	20. New Beginnings

They're still in the tavern. 

Nott and Caleb left to get things together for Frumpkin a while ago and he's been nursing a drink that tastes all kinds of wrong. He has a pouch full of what coin he could keep during the fiasco in Zadash and it's still not nearly enough to pay off Gustav's bail. He doesn't want to ask the others for help--it's his burden to pay after all. But he's not sure what he can do to reduce the sentence to a manageable amount--

“Hey, what's wrong?” Beau asks and he honest to god startles because out of everyone he would expect to ask him that it isn't the world’s gruffest monk. 

Jester and Fjord are at the counter securing rooms and Yasha is quietly watching him. He wonders if she's the one who prompted Beau to ask him in the first place. He raises a brow at her but the barbarian just raises one back. 

“Lots of things,” he admits after a moment, eyeing Beau who ignores his skepticism and pulls her leg up onto her chair in a half perch.

“Damn, I mean... _that's_ a whole mood,” She sighs and he does the same. 

There's so much in his head. So many things he needs to do. A list in his pocket with a new series of words on it pertaining to a particular wizard because he's learned a whole set of things to avoid or at least be sensitive too in the past forty eight hours than he ever thought he would. And he didn't think he was treating Caleb any different for it, but the way the wizard had recoiled, bit out his words, and narrowed his eyes at him when he offered to accompany him on the excursion to get his cat back-- well, it had definitely stung. 

And there's the Gustav problem still. 

“You, uh, ever get to an obstacle and you're not sure how to get over it?” He finally asks, kneading the bridge of his nose and swirling the piss poor quality drink with the other hand.  

“Ha, _no_ ,” She barks, cracking her knuckles with a smirk, “There's always a way around things. Sometimes you just have to fucking punch a few people to find it.”

“What if in this instance being, ah…,” he eyes her up and down and she scowls, “ _You_ , doesn't exactly help?”

“First of all, I'll pretend like that was a compliment,” She ticks off a finger, pointing at him with the other and kicking back her chair, “Secondly what exactly are you referring to?” 

“I don't have enough to bail Gustav out,”He admits, crossing his arms, tail tapping against the chair leg. 

She barks out a laugh, “Yeah you do.” 

He frowns, “No, I _literally_ don--” 

She tosses a bag of coin on the table that hits with a heavy thud, shifting and rattling for a moment before sliding into deadly silence. 

“Where--?” 

“Took a few jobs on the side while everything was going on, saved some of my own stuff,” She mutters, arms crossed and shoulders hiking, doing a careful job to avoid his eyes and Molly can see a small smile on Yasha’s face beside the coloring monk,  “Like I said, I always planned on getting him out for you.” 

“Beau…” 

“Don't make it sappy, just take the damn money, idiot,” she bites back, lip curling. 

A small, nearly hysterical laugh leaves him, dragging the tied bag close and a part of him is afraid it will just vanish but it stays and he stares at it, dumbfounded. 

“I can't exactly repay you...” Not yet at least. When he gets enough money he'll find a way to pay her back. 

“Just don't die again.” 

He smirks, beaming at her and she still avoids meeting his eyes, “I'll try not to.” 

“Good,” Beau grumbles leaning into Yasha’s side and the barbarian just chuckles, shooting him a small amused smile that's just the slightest tilt to her lips but it means everything. 

“You know I think she's learning,” he stage whispers to Yasha and Beau growls. 

“I think she is too,” Yasha says and there's a softness to her face he hasn't seen in quite some time. 

“What's this about learning?” Fjord interjects, dropping a few keys on the table before taking his own seat with a weary sigh. 

“Our little Beau-peep is growing up, Fjordy,” Molly says playfully, snatching up one of the brass keys and twirling it on his finger by the ring.

“Is she?” Fjord asks, a smirk playing on his face and Molly can just make out his remaining tusk peeking through, it makes him grin even wider. 

He hadn't realized the man stopped chipping and filing it down. He wasn't sure what Fjord would do when Molly first noticed the gap in his teeth, the glaring absence of the left tusk obvious when he pulled them from that hell and Fjord had given him a tired, but wholly relieved smile that held a thousand different things in it. 

“Shut up, Molly,” Beau grumbles, fussing with the wraps on her arms, “I can always take the money back.”

“Ah-ah,” he tsks, slipping the gifted money off the table, “No take backs.” 

She squints at him, grimacing, “I'm starting to regret my decision to be nice to you.” 

“Oh! You gave him money for the bail!” Jester crows, leaning across the table to presumably pinch Beau's cheek but the monk deflects it with a grimace, “Thats so _cute_ , Beau.” 

“It's whatever,” She huffs, leaning away from the excitable tiefling and Molly can't help the chuckle that leaves him at her misfortune or the slight dusting of pink on Beau’s cheeks at the attention. 

“It's been awhile since they left,” Caduceus interjects after a moment, looking into his own, still very much full, tankard. 

“I'm no human clock, but yeah, suns dipping a bit low,” He says, squinting, head tilting towards the entrance like the wizard will prove him wrong and walk through it, “Last time we were here the place wasn't that far away...was it?” 

“No… no it wasn't,” Fjord affirms with his own frown. 

“We should probably go look for them, make sure they haven't, like, done anything, I don't know, stupid, you know?” Jester pipes up, looking to each of them with a worried pinch to her eyes. 

“Honestly, I think all the stupid is at this table,” Molly chuckles, the key he's been twirling on his finger slipping off and clattering to the table. 

“So you _finally_ admit you're an idiot?” Beau asks with a smirk and he rolls his eyes, flipping her off.

“Ha-ha,” he deadpans, “You got me.” 

“Whelp,” Fjord sighs, pushing back from the table with the ear splitting squeal of chair legs against wood, stretching his arms above his head and the pop-pop of his shoulders has Molly wincing and grimacing, “Let's go find ‘em then.” 

The sun is starting to dip low when they gather outside the tavern. Molly scans the streets, shielding his eyes from the remaining harsher light of a dying dusk. Squinting and hoping that maybe he'll catch a glimpse of a familiar coat or the dark ensemble of a certain goblin. That maybe they're just being paranoid…

There's nothing and he turns to Jester with a worried frown. 

“We're not being overbearing are we?” He asks, dropping his voice and falling into step beside her.

Fjords helming the venture with Beau, Yasha trailing behind the monk and scanning the occasional alley ways and bystanders. Molly doesn't quite recall the exact location but he thinks maybe this is the way towards the shop they visited the last time they were here, the one where he's pretty sure the man running the front used some of his own… _substances_ \-- though he's not one to judge. To each their own and all of that.

“What do you mean?” She replies, eyeing him curiously, the bounce in her step wavering. 

“I mean,… they could be fine, right?” He asks, trying to bleed any ounce of optimism he can manage into his voice, “What if we're overreacting and we find them and Caleb…” He pauses, fiddling with the hilt of Summer's Dance and inspecting the cobbled stone beneath his feet, “What it he thinks we don't trust him? What if _he_ thinks that _we_ think he needs to be coddled?” 

“He won't think that,” She waves him off but the small pause and the shift in her ever present smile betrays her doubt.

Molly sighs, “I just don't want to fuck this up. And I don't have much experience with…,” he gesture to the others, “Well, really any of this.” 

He tilts his head back, scanning the bleed of reds and oranges and the drip of twilight starting to swallow the sky. He wishes he knew more, that he knew how to handle things like this-- the word ‘trauma’ a whisper in the back of his head. But sometimes things like this serve as an unfortunate reminder of all the time he hasn't lived. Of all the ways the world hasn't hurt him and all the ways it still could. 

“It's okay, Molly,” She pats his shoulder, keeping her hand there and he looks over to see she's beaming again; it's the most determined he's seen her since he's been back, “We'll learn together.” 

Sometimes he forgets that he's not the only one who might not have the most worldly experiences. That for everything he's seen and done in two years of life there are others who have done even less in twenty. 

“Thanks, Jester,” he smiles and she shines one equally bright back at him. 

She shifts her hand so her arm is slung over his shoulder, “Tiefling Squad?”

“Tiefling Squad,” He agrees with a nod and a wide grin, returning the gesture so they look more like two drunken idiots keeping each other standing rather than just a sober pair of grinning and colorful idiots.

\---

Lawmaster Norda glares up at him from under a furrowed brow, her arms crossed and lips pressed into a tight unyielding line.

“So you're tellin’ me you want to bail those two _and_ Gustav out?” She asks, skepticism bleeding from every syllable.

“That's what I said, yes.” 

“Do you even have the money for that?” She looks him up and down and he would be offended but he knows his coat and his clothes have seen better days. 

He drops the sack of coins on the table, a bit harder than necessary but the way Norda flinches is nearly satisfying. He didn't like the way she was looking at him-- like he's just some idiot carnie. 

She recomposes herself, adjusts the collar of her shirt and reaches for the bag, inching it open and the shine of gold sends her eyes widening. Norda glances to all of them, settling back on him and he smirks, cocking his head, tail lashing and if he's practically baring his teeth at her no one needs to know. 

“Follow me then.” 

“You don't want to stay and count it out?” He asks, hands on his hips and leaning towards her.

“It, ah,--” Norda clears her throat, “It's sufficient enough to cover the damages incurred from all parties involved, Mr. Tealeaf.” 

He nods, gesturing towards the holding area and she hurries for the door, snagging a pair of keys as she goes. He almost feels bad for her, she's just doing her job after all, but she also locked Gustav up and charged him with damages that weren't his to rightfully pay.

They make it to the cells and they're mostly empty and barren. Norda stops, raps the keys against the bars and Molly peers in to see a familiar striped coat and a face he hasn't seen in quite awhile, but he would never forget. The click of the door being unlocked and the Lawmaster moving on is lost on deafened ears. 

“Molly?” Gustav asks and he can't help the stupid grin on his face at the sight and sound of the ex-ringleader. 

“Yeah...It's me,” he curls his fingers around the bars, presses his forehead against the iron, horns knocking against them. 

Gustav mirrors him, a silent greeting separated by a parade rest of iron. A familial one-- when the half-elf would reassure him, comfort him, console him if things got a bit foggy, if he was afraid he might be forgetting… And maybe he can't remember his parents and maybe he can't remember his past, but sometimes he thinks maybe the closest thing he has to the word ‘father’ is trapped in this cell. 

“Have they been feeding you?” He asks, drawing back and looking the half-elf over.

He looks a bit thin, haggard, but otherwise unharmed. Gustav laughs nervously, a strange dichotomy from what Molly can recall from the way he usually is. He learned his confidence from someone after all. That and Desmond of course.

“It's been as pleasant as it can be,” Gustav says, smiling, “I'm just glad to see you're okay,” He gestures towards the cells further down, “And you're still running about with these people I see.”

Molly shrugs, rubbing the back of his neck, “After the troupe fell apart me and Yasha kind of hitched ourselves to a new carnival.” 

Gustav squints, peering around Molly, “Is Yasha here too?” 

“Yeah, she’s--” Molly glances back and there's a glaring absence of barbarian, “She's probably gone with the others to get a couple of our friends out.”

He knows Yasha has a tendency to hover around Caleb now it seems, whether out of some misplaced guilt or obligation, he's not sure. 

“The goblin and a human right?” 

“Yeah, did you--?”

“I saw them when they were brought in… the human didn't--” Gustav frowns, “He didn't look well.”

Caleb hasn't looked well since Molly crawled out of the dirt. He wasn't exactly a shining beacon of physical or even mental health before, but he certainly wasn't so thin a wind could blow him over, the bruises under his eyes nearly black, and pale, far too pale and wan.

“A lot’s happened since you got put in jail, Gustav,” Molly sighs, resting his shoulder against the bars and peering down the hall towards where the others went. 

“Does it have anything to do with those?” Gustav asks and Molly glances down to him pointing at the tangle of silver weaved across his sternum. 

“Yeah, we might've run into a bit of trouble in Shady Creek Run.” 

“ _Shady Creek Run,_ ” Gustav squeaks, flinching back, fingers curling close to his chest, “What the hell were you doing there, Molly?” 

“Business.” 

“Only criminals and thieves do business up there. There's nothing good in that town, Molly. _Nothing_. What business could you have possibly needed to attend to there?” Gustav asks, voice trembling and hands shaking, wringing, a nervous twitch to his lips. 

“What're you so afraid of up there?” He asks, head tilting, carefully avoiding the question.

“I'm not--” Gustav shakes his head, taking a step back, “It doesn't matter.” 

“Gustav?” 

The half-elf shuffles on his feet, nervously eyeing the outside of the cell and the door Norda unlocked. 

“Why're you here for anyways?”  

“We paid your bail,” He gestures to the unlocked door that has yet to be opened, “You're a free man.” 

“No, no, no,” Gustav backs into the wall, sliding down it, legs crossing beneath him and turning a grin up to him that should be reassuring but feels all kinds of stilted, “I'm fine, Molly, don't worry about me. I have time to serve and I'll serve it.” 

Molly frowns, “It's not your time to be serving in the first place.” 

“Is it not?” 

“You're not the one that created the bloody zombies--” Molly shakes his head, “You didn't kill those people, Gustav.” 

“You don't know what I've done…” Gustav mutters and it's so quiet Molly isn't sure if the half-elf meant to say it out loud or not.

The half-elf wrings his hands, glancing to the small window towards the top of the back cell wall, resting his head against the stone before speaking,  “Look, Molly, I'm fine in here, keep your money, go with your friends, be _merry_ \-- don't worry yourself over me. I'm fed, I'm clothed, I'm safe in here.”

“ _Safe_?” He asks, confused, pressing closer, “Safe from what?” 

Gustav waves his hand, smile faltering into a frown, “Just let it alone, Mollymauk.” 

“No,” He shakes his head, grits his teeth, leans his forehead against the grit of the rusted bars, “No, _no_. I won't leave you to sit for time that isn't yours to sit for,” He huffs out a breath, searching for the right words and watching Gustav stare pitifully up at the moon he can't even _see_ properly from the tiny-- _abysmally_ tiny window, “That's _not fair.”_

“Sometimes things aren't fair, Mol--” 

“ _Dammit,_ Gustav!” He slams his hand against the bars, the rattle of the metal reverbing back up his arm and he didn't miss the way Gustav startled or how he's just staring at him now,“You taught me to always make things better-- You--”

He stumbles on the words, tail lashing, and he wants to tear that door open, shake the half elf by the shoulders because this isn't right-- it's all _wrong_ and tilted and it's not Gustav-- not the one he remembers.

“You taught my to be fair and to leave things _better_ than I found them and I'm doing that. I'm --” His voice dips, shaking, cracking, because Gustav is looking at him like he's the one who's gone strange and not the other way around, “I'm trying to _help_ you.”

Gustav just laughs, knocking his head back against the stone wall and looking back up to that barren, dank, ceiling.

“So, _why_ don't you want to leave this cell?” He asks, hand sliding down the bars, frustration snapping away into confusion and the distinct sensation of feeling lost even when he knows exactly where he is. 

There's a long stretching moment of silence, filled by the chatter of the others at the end of this dismal hall of cells. Gustav says nothing, just stares and stares, up into something Molly can't see. His eyes slip shut after a moment and Molly's afraid the half-elf will conk out right there. 

“There's things… people… _places_ I've wronged. That I owe things to. Debts I never repaid,” Gustav laughs again, shaking his head and dragging a palm down his face, “I'm not a good man, Molly, and I'm certainly not a great one.” 

“What are you talking about?” He asks a bit more forcibly than he intended.

“ _A leanbh,_ ” Gustav hasn't called him that since he ‘grew up’, since he regained his autonomy, but sometimes… sometimes he still remembers the half-elf; forehead pressed to his and the name, in that language he still doesn't know all of the words to, whispered to him like it meant everything. 

“I've done things that I regret, that I can't take back, things I never payed for and maybe-- maybe this is karma's way of catching up with me,” Gustav lists against the wall with a sigh, hunches into himself and hides his face in his hands. 

“ _Moonweaver's Blessed_ , Gustav, listen to yourself,” He says, gesturing to the cell, to this prison, “This isn't you, this is-- this is--” 

“Molly,” Gustav interrupts him, still avoiding his eyes, “One of the best things I ever did--” The half-elf looks to the sliver of moonlight, “One of the deeds I don't regret and _never_ will--” Eyes finally meet his from the dark and Molly's blood stills, “Is deciding to take you in.”

His hands curl back around the bars and he places his forehead against them, eyes slipping closed. He remembers every time the half-elf mirrored him, cupped the back of his neck, and called him ‘son’.

“I know if I left you up there, if I just let you wander into the clutches of one of those-- those _groups_ \--,” Gustav shakes his head, grimacing, “They would have _ruined_ you and I-- I  couldn't have that on my conscience.” 

He can't help but wonder what Gustav did before the circus. From what he saw of Shady Creek Run it's a den of criminals and wolves. Packs of people that serve only one purpose; prey on the weak. Whatever Gustav did, whatever he's done in the past, it doesn't matter anymore. Molly doesn't care about that Gustav, he cares about   _this_ one.

“But you can't just hide in a box forever,” Molly breathes, “Even if you've done bad things. Even if you don't think you can be forgiven for them… even if you don't think you can outrun them… you can't stay in a cage forever.” 

Gustav chuckles, “I can certainly try.”

“I won't _let_ you.” 

The hand that falls on his shoulder startles him and he turns his head to see Caduceus,  the firbolg squinting into the mostly dark cell.

“Sometimes the things you're running from are scarier than they seem, because you haven't looked back to really see them in awhile,” Caduceus says with all the air of a man who sees far too much but never quite knows what to do with any of it.

“Who are you?” Gustav asks, pushing himself to his feet and eyeing the firbolg warily. 

“No one important,” Caduceus smiles, that dopey, lazy, disarming smile that makes others dismiss him, overwrite him.

Molly's starting to think it's a reflex, a defense mechanism, a disarmament against a world that too often wants to devour things that show a lick of competency. 

“And how do you know?” Gustav asks, barbed, defensive, and Molly can see the way the half-elf’s growing more agitated gesturing wider and harsher, “You don't even know the half of what waits for me outside these walls.” 

“I don't need to,” Caduceus admits, casually, _factually_ , “But I can see you don't really want to stay in here. I can see that you're scared, that you're sad. That you miss people…” The firbolg frowns, a finger idly tapping the staff and a beetle emerges from one of the many opening with a curious click of its mandibles, “Is giving all of that up worth staying in here?” 

“You don't--” 

“I think you need to decide whether what you're running from is more important than living, Mr. Gustav,” Caduceus cuts him off, voice dipping into gruffer territory, a more harsh timbre than the firbolg’s usual ambivalence.

“I--”

“Is a cage better than a forest?”

“What?”

Caduceus sighs, “If a bird understood that a cage meant food, water, and safety; all at the cost of freedom, would they choose it over the forest?”

“I don't’-”

“I guess you could say it depends on the bird and the person that holds the key,” Caduceus rubs at his chin, musing over the rose colored beard that Molly has unashamedly thought about touching before (because _pink_ and _beard_ ), “But what is more important to _you_?” 

Gustav just wrinkles his nose, eyeing the ground distastefully.

“Benevolent captors outside steel bars?” Caduceus raps his knuckles against the door, “Or the endless freedom and possibility of the forest?” 

“What if the bird is afraid of the predators in the forest that just might know it's name?” Gustav fires back, lip curling. 

“Maybe that's a risk the bird has to take.” 

“The chance of being eaten alive?” Gustav lets out a wry laugh that rattles in the silence, shaking his head, “No thank you.” 

Caduceus frowns, a pensive, solemn look dropping the edges of his face and his ears turning downwards, “So you'd rather die without seeing the sky again, the people you miss, the things you love?” 

Gustav scoffs, waving a hand, “I won't die in here, the sentence isn't infinite. I'll be out eventually and--”  

“And you'll step right into a different cage,” Caduceus cuts him off, a lazy smile curling his lips, a sharp knowing look in his eyes that accompanies a huffing little laugh.

“Maybe that's the tragedy of a caged bird, Mr. Gustav,” The firbolg runs his fingers over the tinges of rust on the bars, “They never quite learn what freedom truly is, even once they find it.”  

Gustav's eye twitches, the half-elf crossing his arms tighter and avoiding both Molly and Caduceus’ eyes now, “If I leave will you stop talking metaphors to me?”

“Gladly,” Caduceus’ smile widens and he steps back from the door.

“Fine,” Gustav grumbles, pushing the unlocked barrier wide and taking a deep breath, shoulders sagging like the first step past the barrier is the weight of the world on his shoulders.

“Remind me to never piss you off,” Molly whispers to Caduceus, leaning towards the firbolg and glancing at Gustav who's warily eyeing the halls like whoever he's afraid of is already out here and waiting for him.

“If I ever really get angry you'll know.” 

“ _Oh_ , ominous,” Molly purrs, “I like it.” 

Caduceus huffs out an amused breath, “Let's go find the others, Mr. Mollymauk.” 

He loops his arms with the firbolg’s and Gustav's, neither of them protesting, and he leads them out of the stockades, into starlight and a silver wash of moonlight from the smiling celestial curve overhead. 

The others are waiting outside, Nott holding Caleb's hand and the wizard holding a bundle of incense to his chest like a lifeline, warily eyeing the Crownsguard stationed outside the building. 

“What're you gonna do now that you don't have a circus?” Beau asks the moment they make it up to the group, Molly dropping their arms and turning his attention to the man in question.

“He's going to stop running,” Caduceus says.

“ _What_ now?” Fjord asks, eyeing the firbolg. 

Caduceus just shrugs, leaning against the staff in his grip, tapping it, and Molly's starting to think there's a rhythm to it. A tap-tap-tap with a measured beat-- a song he doesn't know the words or notes to. 

“Don't go back into a box now that we've gotten you out of one,” Caduceus says, “And I advise you find what you're running from and confront it.” 

“Easy for you to say,” Gustav mutters, dusting off the shoulder of his jacket.

Molly plucks off a piece of lint for him, smoothing out the other side and Gustav turns a smile to him.

“Will you find the others?” He asks, keeping his hand on the half-elf’s shoulder. 

“If they're out there,” Gustav nods towards the rest of the Mighty Nein, “And will you stay with them?”

Molly smiles, a heavy feeling crouching under his sternum at the sad one Gustav gives him in return to his non-answer. 

“That's fine,” Gustav pulls him in, rests his forehead against his one final time in a silent parting and ruffles his hair. Molly draws back with a sharp “hey!’, batting the half-elf’s hand away, and Gustav just laughs. 

“Take good care of him,” Gustav says, turning to the rest of the group.

“We will,” Fjord nods, giving the half-elf a reassuring thumbs up that Molly rolls his eyes at. 

“Hey, should we get him to give us child support?” Beau whispers to Yasha and he shoots her a scowl. 

“Hush,” the barbarian replies with her own amused laugh.

“I'm just saying!” She balks, hands akimbo, “Taking care of Molly is worth at least some kind of compensation.”

“Hey!” He barks, flipping the monk the bird that she gladly returns with a sharp grin of her own. 

“Yasha,” Gustav starts, stepping up to the barbarian, resting a hand on her shoulder,  “I trust you will make sure he doesn't do anything stupid?” 

“What the hell?” He balks, throwing his hands up. 

“I will,” She nods, jaw set and determined.

“Thank you,” He cups the back of her neck, the barbarian a good few inches taller than him but she lets him draw her down so he can rest his forehead against hers, Yasha closes her eyes and Gustav does the same,“And I'm glad you've found a family, _a leanbh_. _Na h-uile la gu math duit._ " 

Yasha doesn't say anything back, a crease forming between her brows, her face a few steps from crumpling, and a hand coming up to rest on Gustav’s shoulder in return. When she finally draws back it's like she was never phased in the first place, composed and stalwart-- as unmoving and unyielding as the storms she answers to. She reclaims Beau's hand, the monk clasping it tightly, fingers weaving with hers. 

“Well… I suppose this is farewell,” Gustav waves, hiking the sack of his meager belongings higher, bowing his head, “May the moon guide you all.” 

“Moonweaver watch us,” Molly says, uncaring of the Crownsguard and this town, the silver tangle of scars a burning beacon on his sternum. 

Gustav chuckles, resting a gentle hand on the side of Molly's neck and smiling, “Moonweaver bless us.” 

Molly supposes this is goodbye and maybe he has the Moonweaver herself to thank for being able to see Gustav again. That he's been blessed that his friends didn't have to shovel off bad news onto the half-elf. A morbid part of him can't help but wonder how this would have gone without him here. 

And by the gods, a part of him still misses the carnival; the simplicity of it, of conning people, laughing with a gaggle of other misfits, the joy and freedom of it all. But maybe he's making a difference here. Maybe he has to let all of that go, because he's meant for something greater...

“ _Slán agat, a Mhic,_ ” Gustav says, the moonlight reflecting in his eyes.

“ _Slán leat,_ ” he breathes back, nodding. 

The half-elf wanders off under the spill of moonlight, silver illuminating him and haloing him in celestial light. Molly curls a hand over his sternum, over the periapt and the wound that killed him for a time that Gustav will never know about and he looks up to the moon. 

“ _Watch him_ ,” He whispers in Infernal and the quietest hint of chiming, silvered laughter tickles his ear. 

“He'll be fine,” Caduceus lays a hand on his shoulder, “He'll find his way out of his cage eventually. We've opened the door, but now it's up to him to leave it.” 

“You think he will?” 

“He may hide behind smiles and laughter, but he is a sad man… a troubled one. I think he knows he's left his past untouched for too long and that it hasn't given him the same courtesy.” 

Molly smirks up at the firbolg, “You're pretty cryptic, you know that?”

Caduceus just chuckles, a soft little exhale of breath, “I know.” 

“I like it though.” 

“You seem to like a great number of things, Mr. Mollymauk.” 

“I can't help myself, there's a whole lot to like in this world, Mr. Clay.”

From these people he's found to the strangers they've met. There's good in the world. Sometimes it's hidden, sometimes it's smothered in shadow, but under moonlight, under a spill of illuminating silver, it's _beautiful_.

The firbolg takes a moment to reply, glancing around at the small gathering they've made before turning back to him with a slow smile, “Maybe there is.”

\------------////-------------

If someone told Caleb he would see Molly emerge all but skipping out of the entrance of the Lawmaster’s headquarters with a firbolg and a half-elf in tow he would ask them if they had been poisoned or drugged. But that's exactly what he sees and he's not quite sure what to do with the imagery other than file it away with everything else that pertains to the strange tiefling and his habits.

He watches the way Gustav treats Molly, the way he looks to Yasha, the words even he doesn't understand exchanged between them, and there's a chest deep ache behind his sternum. It's illogical, it's stupid, but he misses his _Vater_ in that moment.

Gustav departs from them in a jaunt, the spidery limbs of the half-elf carrying him in an exuberant walk. That one’s definitely as odd as the rest of the carnival had been and as odd as the tiefling he picked up and made into a carnie. 

Nott tugs on his hand and he looks down to see her smiling up at him. 

“Let's go get Frumpkin back.” 

“ _Ja_ ,” he agrees quietly, glancing at the others and then to Molly and Caduceus, both of them still watching the retreating half-elf. 

_’Don't go back into a box now that we've gotten you out of one.’_

He's not sure what Caduceus meant by that. Caleb doesn't know the first thing about Gustav's past beyond what Desmond told them moons ago, but he can't stop hearing the words in his head.

_’And I advise you find what you're running from and confront it.’_

Caleb draws the bundle of incense away from his chest, looks down at his hands; rebandaged up to just before the jutting knob of his wrist bones, the small doodle from Jester nestled cheerily over his pulse point. Hands scarred and worked over from a confusing tangle of things; of fire, and knife, and labor. 

A shiny patch of new skin on the back of a hand he cleansed himself. 

And Caduceus had healed it, no questions asked; minimal distress, a quiet patience, and a strange understanding in the way he tended to it. The firbolg that joined them on the whim of a vision, the whim of a forest, the whim of a god. And Caleb's never had much faith. Not for the deities of this Empire, of this continent. The afterlife isn't something he thinks about much either, nor who put him here to do what and exist how. All that is, just is, as it must be. Tangible, _breakable._

But the firbolg joined them on the principle of faith. And he speaks in the tenements of faith as well. Turn and confront your fears. Turn and confront your past. Turn and confront yourself. And Caleb doesn't want any of that. He wants redemption, he wants something that tastes like smoke and revenge and the name Ikithon burned out of existence alongside himself.  He's not sure he wants forgiveness or atonement or anything like that, because what he did-- it's not something forgiven by himself or a god. Only his parents can forgive him and they aren't around to even contemplate giving that to him. 

Caduceus finally notices him staring, ear twitching and head tilting enough that one rose tinted eye can see him and Caleb recoils, fingers tightening around Nott's hand. He walks alongside her, fingers tangling in the bundle of incense rather than fur like he wants it to be. He'll summon Frumpkin back at the tavern… he knows the fey will come back-- he has to-- he _will_. And once he's back...

Once Frumpkin’s back he _should_ tell them the story, this never ending epic of a man born from flames and ruined by them. The thought is amusing, that any portion of his tale would be recorded for others to pick apart. To sift through like he knows the others want to because they want to know, they want to understand, they want to help somehow; like greedy perched vultures with good intentions beneath their talons, but their beaks still tear. 

He doesn't want to peel back those layers of ash and let the things buried beneath them breathe... He doesn't want to expose all of it to the open air, because he knows it will hurt, it will sting, it will be _agony_. And they might just hate him for it. If he tells them all of it-- the whole smoldering mess of it.

\-------

Summoning Frumpkin is easier the second time around, the words coming to him almost effortlessly and the process working smoothly. Smoother than he thought it would be at least and far cleaner than the first time around.

When the bengal cat leaps into his arms he buries his face in his fur and just sits for a good while, holding the cat close. Listening to him purr and breath and to the beat of a heart faster and more alive than his own. 

“Don't leave again,” he mutters and the fey just rumbles. 

He knows it will happen again eventually, that something will happen and he'll lose Frumpkin again, but it doesn't stop it from stinging each time. It doesn't stop it from feeling like it's nearly real everytime. That fear for the chance that Frumpkin won't return, because he doesn't truly deserve the company or aid of any creature.

“Caleb?” The door to the inn room creaks open in time with the question and a certain goblin pokes her head in, “Did you want to come down and eat?” 

“Ja,” he says, getting to his feet, shifting Frumpkin to rest on his shoulders and scarf around his neck where the cat happily slumps, tail flicking.

Nott blinks, seemingly surprised by his quick affirmation and he watches her quickly recover with a nervous shuffle, her ears twitching.

“Oh, uh, good, yea-- yes, of course-- well come on then, Molly's pulling cards for Beau or whatever and I want to see how that goes down.” 

“She is letting him tell her fortune?” He asks, eyeing Nott skeptically. 

“Something like that.” 

“I am sure that will go...well.”

“Only one way to find out,” Nott grins, grabbing his hand and leading him out of the room and down to the tavern below. 

It's well into dark and there's still quite a bit of night left but the tavern is thankfully, mostly empty. The loudest table in the entire place is, unsurprisingly, theirs. 

“And…,” Molly flips a card, pointing at it with a grin, “This one means you're an asshole.”

“Bullshit!” Beau slams her hand on the table, jabbing a finger at the smirking tielfing, “I agreed to this ‘cause you offered, but if you're just gonna insult me you can take your stupid cards and shove them up your--” 

“Cay-leb!” Jester bounces out of her seat, clambering over Fjord who winces when the excitable tiefling’s knee digs into his thigh and over an amused Yasha who is busy watching Molly dodge being mock-strangled by Beau. 

The blue tiefling bounds up and he notices the scarf around her neck, a vibrantly colored thing, offset from the rest of her ensemble. Not as garishly or loudly colored as Molly's coat, more muted if anything, but it's nearly a rainbow of colors and it's a heavy knit, the handiwork easily visible, the weave obvious from a distance. He doesn't expect her to unwind it from around her neck and he certainly doesn't expect her to sling it around his, dropping it where it drapes over a surprised Frumpkin, the fey's ears perking up beneath the fabric. 

“We found this beauty on the way back and I just had to get it,” Jester explains, hands clasped behind her back and grin wide, but there's an unsure tilt to her head as she glances at the ground. “I hope it's okay... I know it's not as plain as your other two, but I thought maybe you could use a little color.”  

He picks up the ends of it, adjusts it so it isn't smothering Frumpkin and the texture runs soothingly against his hands. Not harsh or too smooth, it's just right and just enough it's intriguing, but not so much its scratchy or aggravating. The colors somewhat neutralized, but still easy to pick out… from a sea green, to a sapphire, to a violet, to a rose, a forest green, a cobalt, storm gray, orange, and a smattering of other hues. No two sections are the same and it's a pleasant array of values that while he would never choose on his own it's at least something. 

“It is perfect." Is all he says even if it is a bit much from what he would usually want to wear, but Jester smiles like his words mean everything. 

“Glad you like it.” Molly adds with a grin, shuffling the through the tarot deck almost absentmindedly, “Looks good on you.” 

“I'll admit I was afraid you'd turn it down, but it suits you,” Fjord agrees as well, crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair.

He's not sure what to do with any of their affirmations and praise, nervously shuffling, hands curling in the fabric of the scarf in question, a scarf as colorful as the party he's found himself in. And now it's wound around his neck like a flag… a symbol and a claim he might be okay with because it's nothing like a brand or a collar. It's his choice to wear it. 

He takes a seat beside Caduceus Nott to his other side and Molly and Beau arguing across the table from him with Yasha sat between the two. The firbolg is picking through his own meal, quietly watching the proceedings of Molly and Beau's latest dispute with curious eyes. 

Caduceus seems to notice him staring and Caleb goes to duck his head, stare at the table and design himself to another mealess dinner, but the firbolg speaks and it has him looking back up to rose tinted eyes. 

“You know one of my sisters, she got sick, real nasty bug, not sure what it was to this day but she couldn't eat for what felt like ages,” Caduceus starts, fiddling with a piece of bread, tearing a small bit of it off and musing it between his fingers where it crumbles. “She got thin, frail, and when she finally recovered we had to stop her from eating too much rich food.”

Caduceus smiles, a fond one, like he's remembering something particularly amusing, “I know, it seems backwards, right?” The firbolg shrugs before continuing. “But my mother spoke of a peculiar thing that happens after your body gets used to starvation.”

The firbolg looks up at him, brows drawn down enough Caleb can tell he is concerned, “Too much good can turn sour in the gut…”

Caleb glances at the untouched dish beside the plate of vegetarian offerings and he's starting to wonder if Caduceus already got something for him. He wonders how bad he must look if the firbolg feels a need to speaks to him on terms of starvation. 

“If you want to try and get back to routine eating we can start with simple fruits, broths, easy foods, and then we'll go from there, Mr. Caleb,” Caduceus offers, “I can help make some dishes you might be willing to eat when we're on the road if you let me know what you might like.”

Caleb frowns, brow furrowing. 

“That is--” He starts, faltering, “You do not have to waste that kind of effort on me...I will be fine.”

“It's not a waste if I want to do it.”  

Caleb sighs, fingers running along the fabric of the new scarf. The firbolg is infinitely patient. He knows if he says ‘no’ now the question will just come up again later. and he knows, logically, fundamentally, that he's hampering himself, potentially endangering these people by weakening himself. He couldn't even outpace some Crownsguard soldiers and that's dangerous. That could get him killed. 

“Okay…” 

“Start with this if you want to,” Caduceus pushes him a simple bowl of liquid. 

He knows a broth when he sees one. He's not sure what exactly was meant to be in it, but anything substantially solid has been removed and it's just caramel colored water. But it's also a meal. Caleb reaches for it, darting a glance to the firbolg, the others, drawing it close and staring tentatively at the shift and ripple of it. 

He can say no. He has a choice. And he's almost grateful it isn't such a large choice as _what_ to eat, but rather whether he _should_ eat or not. Whether he _wants_ to. He's not sure he would want to stutter his way through giving an order from a stranger right now, nor would he have the faintest inkling of what to order and the thought of making that kind of a decision sparks a nervous thrum in his chest. 

This is simple. It's yes or no. It's A or B. It's a binary and he knows those. There's only a fifty percent chance he is wrong here. Not an array of wrong choices to make. And that's soothing, that feels… there's something calming about that. But he's still not sure what to choose here. He picks up the spoon with tentative fingers, smooths over the handle with his thumb and looks at his reflection, warped and distorted in the pit of the utensil. He needs to eat, a meal is survival, but there's still that idea, that notion, that if he keeps going maybe eventually no one will ever look at him ever again. It's not hard to miss the dark circles under his eyes, even in the strange perspective of the spoon, and the sallowness of his cheeks is hard to ignore. Caleb grimaces, looking back to the offered meal. 

Yes or no.

A part of him wants to say no. Just to feel it roll off his tongue, rattle around in his head, relish in the power of it, but he knows that's stupid. He knows he's starving himself and the others are nervously watching it happen from the sidelines. Even now he doesn't miss the way Nott shoots nervous glances at him, Caduceus patiently waits for his decision, Molly tries to subtly look up from his new tarot spread-- all of them somehow keeping tabs on him in some way they think might be subtle or unnoticeable. He picks up the spoon. 

He manages to get through half the broth before his stomach twists painfully. He's not sure if it's his head or his gut, but he drops the spoon anyways, the silverware clattering from his hand and he ducks his head at the sharp ring of metal. 

Hands collect the bowl and the discarded utensil, careful not to brush his and he's grateful for the small consideration. His skin feels tight and drawn out, his skull buzzing and the pit of him heavy with a meal that he chose to eat this time. It's an odd sensation. This autonomy. For all the ways he wanted control over _everything_ before taking care of himself, feeding whatever shambling husk this is, that hadn't occurred to him until it became a problem. Until the tremble in his hands became nearly permanent and the fog in his head unbearable.

He thinks maybe… maybe he doesn't like this feeling. This stretched out, worn down, and thinned sensation. Like he's been pulled in several different directions at once without a consideration for how the end result might look. His thoughts are oil in water and he wants them back, but they won't mix correctly, they won't leave the surface, and he wants them back down with him where he can cling onto them, make sense of them again. 

He thinks maybe-- just maybe, he doesn't like living like this anymore. He thinks maybe he wants to find himself again; amongst the shattered reflections, the bloodied shards, the fragmented and stained glass. That there's a Caleb in there that he remembers being, and he wants that one back. 

He looks up to the firbolg; the man patiently spooning the remainder of the unfinished meal into a grateful goblin’s bowl who eagerly digs into the extra portion.  
Caduceus finally notices him staring and smiles, a small simple and lopsided thing. 

And Caleb thinks maybe these people can actually help him.

\-------------------

The bed’s just sitting there.

It's not doing anything. The sheets harmlessly smoothed out and folded back and the feather-down pillow has a small rip in it where a few of the pieces of its stuffing are spilling out. And it's decidedly not a threat. 

He inches towards it, Frumpkin still purring on his shoulders, the rumbles soothing down his spine. Shaking fingers grab the edge of the sheets and the slide of harsh cotton on his fingertips has him recoiling.  He frowns, bites his lip, fingers tapping against one another and shifting on his feet. It's just a bed. They're just sheets. The alarm spell is up, the door is arcanely locked-- it's safe. He glances to the foot of the bed where a particular goblin is already curled up and in the beginning stages of snoring. Nott is here too. And she would never let someone in here that wasn't approved of. She wouldn't let him get hurt. 

He settles on the bed, legs crossed in front of him, Frumpkin perking up on his shoulders. Fingers run over the sheets again, pinching at the rough cotton and his wrist brushes them and he blanches, recoiling. He doesn't like it. He would rather sleep on the floor, because at least that's solid, he would rather sleep pressed up into a corner, because at least that's secure. He doesn't want to sit on this bed any longer and he certainly doesn't want to lay in it because all he can think about is all the things that have happened in one and its illogical, it doesn't make sense, because this bed is nothing like the others, but it feels everything like a threat. 

His chest hitches, a low distressed sound working its way out of his throat, and he doesn't know why it's so hard to just lay down and go to sleep on these sheets stone cold sober, but it is. He wants to go back down, knock back enough alcohol that it isn't hard to chase sleep up here, find anything else that might help this feeling go away. The rise and fall of his chest gets more ragged and he can't help the mantra of ‘weak’ racing through his head. Nott stirs awake and the hot flare of shame colors his neck, because she can't see him like this-- halfway to a panic attack from just sitting on a bed that's done nothing to him.

“Caleb?” She asks groggily, “Did you have a nightmare?”  

He shakes his head, worrying the heel of his palm between his teeth and wondering why he can't just do one simple thing--

“That's okay, you're okay,” She soothes, drawing his hand away from his teeth,  “Did you want to talk about it?” 

He shakes his head. He wants to talk about it, but the buzzing in his skull and the rattling in his chest makes him think his words won't work right now. 

Nott just hums, holding out her hands and he places them in hers, loosely curled and palm up like an offering. Frumpkin trots over and spills across his crossed legs, splaying along his thighs in a yawning stretch of fur. The humming continues and he ducks his head, closes his eyes, listens, the trembling in his limbs dying with each lilting note.

He blinks his eyes open in surprise when she _sings_ , quietly, but not anything he was expecting. And it's not a language he understands. It's something foreign, the syllables strained, odd, and thready,  nothing like the gruff, throaty rumble of Zemnian. Her voice cracks on parts, dipping and wavering, but she whispers it into the air in a hymn that settles along his shoulders in a calming brush.

He's disappointed when it ends. 

He looks up, her eyes are brimmed with memories, a far away contemplation settled on her face, and she blinks like she's forgotten where she was for a moment. When she notices him staring she smiles, snaggle toothed, the gap of a missing tooth no longer a threat, but a simple fact he can't ignore anymore. Her left hand, down to three fingers instead of four, still holding his, firm and unyielding. He can't escape that fact either. He can't pretend like it doesn't exist. It's a part of her now. As much as the brand on her shoulder that he no longer bears because he's not brave enough to carry the burden she has. 

She's always been braver than she knows, she wears her wounds, the things that have changed her, like flags, emblems, symbols of triumph… of _survival_... even if she covers up the skin she doesn't want to call her own. And he's noticed the bandages less and less, the peek of green skin growing bolder, her hands unbandaged and light-green, nearly white, scars mar the surface of them. It reminds him of Beauregard. Her scars are armor. Her scars are _swords_.

His are not. 

All covered up, concealed beneath bandages and secrecy, and a well of regrets. The more he can hide the further he can avoid questions and scrutiny and even his own recollections. He doesn't want to see the remains of burns that snake up both arms and speak of a house, of rubble, of everything he's ruined. He doesn't want to see the cuts that still itch. He doesn't want to see the other, newer scars nestled among them either.  

He wishes he could just skin all of them off, remove them like that brand that was pressed into his hand. He wishes he could remove the unseen scars too. The nightmares, the memories. He wants to carve it all off and shed it as easily as his skin. But he's not sure a sharp enough knife exists for that kind of task anyways.

“Are you with me?” she asks, slowly dropping his hands until he finds Frumpkin purring away in his lap and he cards his fingers through the bengaled fur, a sigh bleeding past his lips. 

It's like a floodgate giving in his head and words snap back with all the ease they should have remained there with.

“Ja.” 

“Good.” 

“What, ah...?” 

“It's something Yeza used to sing,” She admits, fiddling with the simple gold chain slung around her waist,  “When things were bad… when-- when I wasn't sure if he was going to make it off that table.” 

Sometimes he forgets that of them all Nott is the most likely to understand what it's like to stand on the other side of a torturer's table. To look down on someone and think, “What can they give me before they break?” And there's a harrowing solidarity in that. 

“He would--” She smiles fondly,” “He would sing it to me when we were-- when I'd visit him and...and he'd calm me down, reassure me that we-- that he was okay. Eventually I learned the lyrics...” 

Caleb thinks over the words, the melody, the language he doesn't know, “It's ah… it is beautiful.” 

She nods, smile growing warmer. “It is.” 

He wonders how much she misses the halfling. How close they were. A part of him wants to have the chance to thank the man for showing kindness to her even when he owed her none in the clutches of a goblin den that would sooner see him dead. Caleb doesn't have to meet Yeza to know the halfling is a better man than him. 

“You will find him.”

She just smiles solemnly, turning away from him. “I know...” 

He doesn't poke at that, whatever turmoil is there, and she curls up back at the end of the bed. Caleb lays down after a moment as well, Frumpkin curling up on his chest again. And he's not sure if he can sleep because the sheets beneath him are still nearly a threat, but he knows he needs to sleep. 

That he's been riding a fine line for too long. 

He stares at the ceiling, listens to Nott shift and adjust near his feet at the foot of the bed, eyes slipping shut and back open, before sliding closed. Fingers settle on his ankle that would otherwise feel threatening, but there's only three of them… and he could never mistake them for anyone else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Irish (or Gaelic if you want to call it that) Translations: ( because I do what I want and Gustav knows Irish or whatever the Exandrian equivalent is.) 
> 
> A leanabh-my child
> 
> a Mhic- my son
> 
> slan agat- Which means, basically, “have safety.”
> 
> slan leat- Literally “safety with you.”
> 
> Na h-uile la gu math duit.- May all your days be good


	21. Pale White Horse, Violet Forgiveness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prepare to be beaten to death by overarching metaphors. 
> 
> Some spoilers for episode 46 pertaining to Yasha backstory we got dumped on us. And my own additions to it because this story is already very far outside the realm of canon.
> 
>  
> 
> Chapter Song/Mascot; "From A Cage" - Envoi
> 
> Long chapter, still unbetaed. did my best to catch things still. might have missed some typos and sentence structure stuff.

__

_He blinks awake and it's all darkness._

_There's the chill of iron beneath his fingers, the knocking flutter and rustle of feathers and the trill of a bird. He looks down, fingers curling further between the bars of the small bell-shaped cage clutched to his chest. The bird flies at the cage door, latches onto it with its feet and he places a hand over the door-- over a door with no latch._

_The bird cries, flaps its wings, grabs what expanse of skin it can and tugs with beak and talons; its efforts futile but it doesn't give in. He watches it, the black and white-patterned wings, the tawny tans, the visage of a mockingbird--but it sounds nothing like a mockingbird._

_He turns the cage so the only exit is pressed against his chest, against the thudding tempo of his heart that matches every angry wing beat from inside the wrought iron. He draws his hand away, sure of the birds security, and watches the slow beading roll of crimson down his hand._

_A hand emerges from the inky dark, smears the blood across his palm and further, circling around his wrist and he tugs against it, but another halts him, a vice trapped around his upper arm. He clings the cage to his chest, turns his torso away from those hands and shields as much as he can of it with his free arm as more hands devour up the free space on his captured limb. More join it, fingers pressing into his shoulder blades, sliding up and up and around his throat, squeezing and he gasps, fingers spasming where they've tangled in between the cage’s bars._

_He doesn't know why, but he can't let them take it. He won't let them take it. They can tear him apart first-- he needs to keep it safe._

_Hands grab his ankles, more tiptoeing up his legs, pressing into his calves and his thighs and his hips, spanning along his ribs and he keens, the sound bleeding from his throat in a desperate whine. And they take and they take and they take--- and they reach for that cage and he holds it higher, keeps his hand clasped over the door, hoists it up above the encroaching tide of fingers and shadows buzzing across his skin._

_The bird shrieks, rattling the bars, tearing at his hand; relentlessly, animalistically, in a blind frenzy that is hard to witness for the black beginning to obscure his vision. A flood of hands cupping his jaw, settling along his cheeks, over his lips, and fingers smother his vision until all he can see is a sliver of the cage he's holding above all of this-- he needs to keep it safe._

_He can protect it. He-- He can't take his hand off the door, it's not safe-- it will die out there if he lets it go._

_But those hands are creeping up his arm, slithering their way up the scarred surface of it, consuming every inch of him and reaching up for it, for the cage, and he knows if they catch it-- if they reach it-- it will be terrible._

_If he doesn't let it leave, it will drown with him down here._

_If he doesn't let it leave, it will die with him down here._

_He can just barely make out the fingers brushing the bars, the bird's cry a wail; a choking, shattering sound that is all too audible, even through the hands covering his ears._

_If he doesn't let it leave…_

_His fingers slip, sliding down the bars chilled beyond earthly means. Hand unfurling from where it settled over the door and there's a burst of sound; the mockingbird slamming against the unlocked door in a rush of feathers, the wail of creaking metal, the hiss of a fire, the crackle of burning wood and the last sliver of light is snuffed out, the hands dragging him under the surface._

_There's nothing for a long time._

_It's quiet._

_It's dark._

_He breathes in and it slides like poison down his throat._

_He sits up when he remembers how to use his limbs; water sliding against him, emerging from a basin, gasping for air and shuddering. He looks down and it's a bath filled with water colored in midnight, but far darker and it clings to his skin and drags at him when he tries to stand, threatening to pull him back down. His fingers slip on the edge, fumbling for a handhold, slicked in the same poisonous ink and he slides out of it, stumbling up onto coltish legs, shivering, arms wrapping around himself._

_The room is empty, the walls breathing a blank white and the floor doesn't exist either, but he's standing and he looks back and there's no bath; there's a forest. He looks ahead and there's a fire. He looks back again and there's a house; forward and there's a dungeon._

_He goes to look back again but stops._

_There's something moving in the dark. There's something in the cell and he steps up to the bars. It looks up to him with eyes like cerulean, a collar around its throat, pale, freckled skin, and hair like flames-- a mirror in its face._

_“What are you looking for?” It asks._

_He shakes his head. Because he doesn't know._

_“What have you seen?”_

_He shakes his head again. He doesn't understand. None of it makes any sense._

_“Is it everything?”_

_He stares at it and it stares back._

_“Is it you?”_

_He doesn't answer._

_“What is it worth?”_

_The bird is looking past the bars, behind him, and the door to the cell is unlocked, but he won't open it and he knows it won't open it either. Its hand is clutching at an amulet hanging around its neck and there's bruises littering its arm, red satin coiled around its legs and waist and the harsh breathing of something in the dark and he doesn't-- he doesn't want to look at it anymore._

_He turns away._

_And there's a staircase and he's looking down it, the walls shrinking in on him, the stairs buckling and shifting. And there's red eyes at the base of them and they're staring up at him and it's all framed by lavender skin and chromatic colors that drip and bleed as much as the hole in their sternum._

_“Caleb.”_

_They say his name and he stumbles down a step, reaches out between that gap, and he doesn't understand why they're falling backwards into a grave, why there's a snow fall dappling him in chilling pinpricks and dirt beneath his knees. Fingers curl into the edge of that pit they've fallen into and he reaches for them again, fingers brushing through tousled hair framing dark horns and settled across a bloodstained forehead._

_“I am sorry.” He says and there's a flood of silvered moonlight across them._

_“Are you?” He looks up and the bird is there again, standing beside a cross strung together with bleeding hands and pain; a prismatic coat hung on it as an offering to gods that were never merciful._

_He blinks and there's the sound of a bird trilling again and he looks down to see an overturned basket under his hands, the weave all too tangible and all too immaterial against his palms._

_“Will you keep it there?” He looks up and it's blue eyes once more and a collar that shines silver against pale skin that's scarred in all the same ways as his own._

_He doesn't lift his hands from the basket and he can feel the bird beating at its prison beneath him, but it's safer in there._

_“What will it cost?” It asks and he looks up to that husk again and it just stares at him, pointing at something on him and he looks back down to see the amulet, the closed golden eye, trapped around his neck._

_“You have to let it out.” He glances behind him; there's a small figure, a dark cloaked one, bandaged viridian skin, four fingers on each hand, one dipped in crimson, and candle lit eyes._

_“It will die if you keep it there, Caleb. You have to let it out.” She says._

_He shakes his head, presses his palms against the basket and avoids that steady gaze._

_“Please, Caleb.” He looks over and there's sapphire and cerulean and cobalt and freckles; hands reaching out for him, tinged with magic that only wants to mend and fix and heal._

_“It's up to you.” His attention snaps over to pearly gray fur, a thin humanoid, sloping ears, a flat nose and a cascade of rose colored hair, and all of it stands on the fringes of death warmed like spring and the bitter taste of life._

_“I can't make this decision for you.” Sea green fading to a lighter hue, the single nub of a tusk poking from viridian lips and a falchion, bleeding the ocean, held at his side. A confusion to his face, an uncertainty as sure as the furrow carved between scarred brows and an unknown to his eyes as depthed as the sea dripping from his skin._

_“Do whatever you want to, I'm still here no matter what.” Sashes of blue and tanned skin and a gruff snarl turned to a solemn frown on lips that usually hold a confidence that he nearly envies. She watches him with curled fists, teeth bared; a guard dog at his beck and call he never asked to follow him._

_“I will be there, for whatever you choose.” Storm grays, the rumble of thunder, a pale shock of skin and a mane of tangled hair that radiates a strength he's only ever admired. A thunderstorm-- a harbinger-- insurmountable._

_“This is your choice to make.” He looks forward, ahead of him, and there's someone else kneeled, their hands to either side of the basket and there's the plip of blood from the tear in their chest and the trickle of more sliding down from their lips. Patterns wind up their skin and shift into colors and stories and the tale is as beguiling to him as the person it paints._

_They reach into that coat, the one that shines like so many gems and reads like a tapestry of creation. A card is drawn forth, the back a shifting midnight blue, a silver moon nestled in the center that shines._

_“You can always choose your fate, Caleb Widogast,” they say and he reaches for it, keeping one hand on the basket-- trapping the bird inside._

_He plucks the card from hands stained in crimson and dressed in lavender; glances to the mirror standing behind the violet phantom, and it's just watching, eyes blank and terribly, awfully, familiarly blue._

_He flips the card over._

_He takes his remaining hand off the wicker woven cage._

_And there's fire._

__

 

He shoots up from the mattress, hands scrabbling at the sheets and a confused sound leaving him when he can't find the card and there's no fire eating up his arms. 

“Caleb, Caleb, hey, it's okay,” Someone grabs his hands, he tries to pull them away and they mercifully release him. 

He curls them close to his chest, drawing his knees up to shield them from anymore attempts. 

“Sorry, sorry,” the voice says and he focuses in on it, breath shallow and a shaky residual quaking his limbs. 

It takes him a moment but he finally recognizes the dark clothes and the skin and the eyes and it's all Nott and no one else. She's watching him, wide eyed, her hair mused and squinting, all the throes of grogginess and interrupted sleep marking her. Caleb glances to the window, the break of dawn is beginning in a climbing fire that eats up the horizon line and he flinches at the sight of it. 

~~He needs to tell them.~~

Frumpkin crawls into his lap and he muses over the fey's fur, focuses on the way it settles against his palm, on the way his fingers card through it and it shifts and sifts against his skin. 

“Caleb?” 

He hums, a small questioning thing in reply to his name falling so pleadingly from her. 

“What happened in your dream?” 

That's too broad. Too open ended. He picks a point he can remember and he clings to it. 

He smooths over the spot behind Frumpkin’s ear with the pad of his thumb. “There was a bird.” 

“What kind of bird?” 

Browns, patterned wings, beady eyes. “Mockingbird...” 

Nott doesn't say anything for a bit and Caleb continues to pet through Frumpkin’s fur, the sensation against his palms uniquely soothing.  

“Where were you in the dream?” 

“I-” That one's hard. He can't remember exactly. His brow furrows and his breath hitches, fingers halting where he's musing at the velvety feel of Frumpkin’s ear. 

“Don't worry about that one, Caleb,” She says and he still doesn't look up at her, “Where was the bird?” 

“In a cage.” 

“What was the cage made of?” 

Blood. Pain. “Iron...” 

“And did you let it out?” 

His hand slipping from the bars, more dragging him down, the sound of the door snapping open. “Yes.” 

“And then?” 

Flashes of imagery, all linked to eventual ruin and then a cell, and a bird that was never a bird, “I-- I saw myself.” 

“Where?”

“In a…" A cell, a dungeon, a hopeless hell. “In a cage.” 

“And did you let yourself out?”

He couldn't-- he can't-- There's still things he _can't_ do. “No.” 

“Why not?” 

Bruises and blood--satin-- and hands and everything that waits outside that cell, flames amongst them. “It is safer for them in there.” 

She tilts her head. “Safer for who?”

Himself, her, all of them. “Everyone.”

“Why?” 

A house catching flame under his touch, a fire in his skull burning him to swipe sweet oil on his lip and breath words that dripped like lava, and a hell-fire that devoured him and all of them who touched him. “Fire.”  

“What do you mean?” 

“I will burn it down eventually,” he says matter of factly, glancing to a sunrise that's beginning to match the inferno in his skull, “ _All_ of it. And it'll-- I will-- it will turn to ash in my hands and I will remember why I stayed away.”

Because Ikithon will find him. He'll catch him eventually and the others too and he'll have to watch them be used against him. Like Lorenzo used her against him. 

“Stayed away from what?”

Attachments, caring, family. “Sentiment.” 

Nott frowns. “You can't hide from sentiment, Caleb. You're a beating heart, a flesh and blood human.” She reaches for him, her hand in his peripheral and then on his cheek and he looks up at her. “It'll happen whether you want it to or not and I think you might know how you feel about these people, but you're too afraid to admit it.” She points to the door. “You're afraid that you might care about them.” 

He frowns. “If I care then I can not do what I need to do, Nott.” 

“And why's that?” 

His hand curls around the amulet. “Because if I care about them they will get in the way.” 

They can be used against him. They can convince him to stop. And he doesn't want either of those scenarios to ever occur. 

“But you care about me, so will I get in your way?”

He doesn't answer, because he still doesn't know if she would or not. 

“What if they were the same as me? What if we all helped you, Caleb? What if instead of being in your way, we helped you get there?”  

He shakes his head. “It is dangerous.” 

“ _Everything's_ dangerous.” 

“No, I mean--” He breathes shakily, the words losing themselves into jerky breathes at the thought of what Ikithon could do to him-- to them, at the thought of giving up on remedying his past, at giving up on his parents-- on fixing it all. 

Nott purses her lips, nodding. “What it we help you find a better way to get revenge and redeem yourself?” 

“I don't--” He shakes his head.

“What if we did everything we could to help you get back at Trent?” She offers, cutting him off and speaking far too plainly, like it isn't a death wish. “What if we did everything we could to help you grieve your parents?” She continues and he flinches. “To help you forgive yourself?” 

She reaches for his hands and he passes them over wordlessly, her thumbs brushing over his knuckles when she rests his hands in her smaller ones.

“What if you let us help you, Caleb?” 

“How would I even start?” He asks, quietly, whispering it into the quiet and the flood of dawn encompassing them. 

“Tell them.” 

“Everything?” 

She shakes her head, peering up at him with eyes that hold a knowledge in them that even he's glanced over, disregarded, a maturity amongst it all that he neglected to see.

“Only as much as you're willing to give.” She says after a moment, lips pressed into a thin line that's nearing a frown. 

He's not sure. He's not sure yet. It doesn't-- it doesn't feel right and he's scared, he's _terrified_. He feels impossibly small beneath the weight of it, impossibly breathless. But he needs to tell them-- tell them something. Something about fire, about himself, about the two words he uttered and choked over-- cried over because he couldn't keep it in, couldn't keep it under control. He thinks maybe they deserve to know at least this. That he's not what they thought he was, that he's as tainted as his skin feels sometimes, because he has the ash of his own decisions stuck in his throat. 

He'll make a decision later. On how much to say-- what to say. For now he looks to dawn, to rising sunlight and he thinks about choices and threads, about which one he should choose-- and about a card with a pale white horse; skeletal and finite, and whether he's trapped beneath its judgement or the rider on its back.

\------------

Trostenwald is left behind, but this time they're traveling southwards, to a new place. _Outside_ the Empire. and he's never left the ruling of this land besides Shady Creek… if he could consider that leaving behind anything. The reaches of the Dwendalian Empire have always felt farther than what was possible to traverse on his own, but here he is. On a magically concealed cart, with a group of people who have been through more with him than he can even rightfully say Astrid and Eodwulf had and maybe that's a bit disconcerting, a bit odd-- like a bitter taste in his mouth that keeps lingering.

He's not sure how to take that, how to truly process and mull over that revelation so he shoves it aside for another. A bump in the road jostles where he's stuck himself into the back corner, a book open on his legs, but he's not reading. 

There's so much more to do than read. 

They're heading to the coast for a purpose-- that thing in Fjord's chest. And they're far behind schedule for the pickup, but maybe there's still answers to be had there. They're heading there for Jester's mother too. Each time the coast is mentioned there's a far away look to her eyes, a pinch between her brows, and that rare sadness seeps through. Caleb knows he'll make sure she sees her mother again if nothing else is accomplished by this venture. 

And he thinks maybe they're heading to the coast because they're all _tired_ of this Empire. For now at least. He still has plans, even with how quickly they keep trying to crumble in his palms. And he knows he still wants to accomplish them, he still wants that power, because he can change everything. But with these new days, with each new break of light, he grows more unsure, conviction slipping from his palms like sand. And where time felt expendable, because he knew it was bendable, now it feels precious. Like sifting gold and he should cling to each ticking second in his head, because it means there isn't jumps and skips-- gaps that go unexplained and unaccounted for. It means stability, and he wants to hold onto it for however long it will last, for however long this suspended clarity will remain before he slips back into muted grays and sliding water muddling his senses. 

A part of him likes the surface. It's calm up here, it's easier to think and see and feel, but he knows storms are inevitable, they'll roll across the calm and they'll plunge him back under those depths and it'll grow dark again, it'll be hard to think again. All of his spells, all of his ideas for them, his research and his interest will fade away again, all in an instant, and he doesn't want to lose it again, but he knows it will happen. The cycle is familiar. Greys to blues to greys to reds to blacks and back, and it's never a question of _if_ it'll be back, but _when._

And he's not sure if it got worse after everything or if he's just intimately aware of that terrible settling pressure over the whole of him. The one that presses like stones on his chest and fogs his head; clouds a careful judgement and logic until decisions seem right despite their impulsivity and the voice in his head holds a flawed logic that cripples him. He doesn't like that Caleb as much as this one. But he knows he's waiting somewhere down there… 

He glances up when the cart comes to a stop. He's not sure how much time has trickled by, but it's gotten dark and his brow furrows. It had just been late mid day and somehow he's missed an entire half days of travel and it's that same disconcerting feeling as the one that knows the clouds will always be back. Storms never stop, they just have merciful periods of clear skies between them, and he's fearful of the rumbles of another on the horizon.

"I'll take first watch." Caleb looks over to Yasha, propping herself up with the greatsword and vaulting over the edge of the cart. 

There's things he wants to ask her. Things the others don't know enough about, that he wouldn't even be comfortable speaking to Nott about yet… maybe ever. 

"I will take first watch as well,” he hears himself say, but it's a bit disjointed from the rest of him as he gets to his feet. 

He doesn't miss the way Beau glances to Yasha, the two sharing a silent conversation that ends in the barbarian nodding and the monk returning the gesture with the hint of a smile and her own nod.

He turns from their unspoken agreement, hoists himself over the edge of the cart and reaches for the spool of silver wire. There's a suspended series of actions he goes through like clockwork; a fickle routine he's established and kept best he can because it feels right. Laying the wire around the fire they've decided to make, the temperature turned chilled even this far south. No snow in sight, but a brisk breeze that has a few of their party looking for a warm meal to counteract it. Caduceus cooks, looking to him in a silent question that Caleb numbly answers, mind caught on all of the ways he wants to ask Yasha how she is who she is and all the ways he can't articulate that in so many words, because it hurts. The context, the implication, the idea of strength and stalwartness and immovability as foreign to him as the god she answers to. 

Caduceus passes over a bowl and he doesn't even recall eating the strained meal, but it's gone in a blink and he passes it back to the firbolg's quiet approval. He doesn't set up the tiny hut afterwards, the others deciding that tents will do for tonight, grumbles of cramped sleeping and no privacy a very vocal complaint from some, and while a part of him itches at the loss of a routine step, he at least has the wire and Frumpkin across his shoulders to soothe it for now. 

Yasha settles down beside the now dying fire, great sword across her lap and fingers idly tracing the runes, occasionally glancing out to the dark swaddling the encampment. The others have retired and the only chatter is the rabble of night calls and the chitterings of nocturnal beasts. Caleb watches for a moment, the barbarian repeating the process of following the runes with her fingertip and he wonders if it's similar to the way he reaches up and cards his fingers through Frumpkin's fur. If it's a distraction, if it's grounding, if it's as calming for her to caress living steel that's been dipped in blood and a history of righteous execution as a cat is for him.

He sits down, a few feet from her, side eyeing her with a quick glance, silently prompting Frumpkin to trot over and brush against the side of her leg. 

"Oh," she breathes, surprised, like she forgot he was here, her hand moving from the weapon to the fey nearly reflexively, leaning down towards the cat. "Hello."

"I think he likes you." He says quietly, nearly joking, mirroring the barest hint of a smile on her face. 

It's a small, harmless lie. 

He can't explicitly tell if Frumpkin likes any of them, the fey obligated to obey his silent wishes and intents, but he doesn't garner much protest from the fey's side and the cat simply closes his eyes, ears flicking back at the fingers that scratch under his chin. He doesn't miss the way she smiles fully at that either and it's like watching ice gradually melt, revealing the weathered stone beneath. 

She looks nearly vulnerable in the soft light of the dying flames, exposed. More open and, dare he say, small in this low light and it's a stark contrast to the image in his head. The dark circles under her eyes visible even beneath the dust of her usual make up, a slight gauntness he hadn't noticed before, the skin pulled taut on her frame. And while she still has the muscle mass of someone that could pitch him across a field, there's a thinness there too. Something he's missed and his image of her, his ideal of her, shifts with the revelation. 

That maybe she isn't as untouchable as the storms she follows. 

He looks down at his hand, the same hand that held the mark he can still see when he stares at it long enough, but no one else can. It's like everything else now. Invisible to them, but it's there. It's always still there. And everything he did to try and make it all go away... It's all there too. And it's only built on top of it, highlighted it, dragged it, bloody and beaten, to the forefront and he wishes it was as invisible as the missing brand, but it's not.

He looks back to Yasha; her face hardened and as unreadable as he remembers it always being. Her hand carding through fur he knows the feel of beneath his own, but her hands are different. Everything about her feels different from him...and yet the same. Her face untouched and unmarred, but he knows things lurk beneath the collar of her shirt; scars and reminders. And guilt; the press of guilt settled like the short fur cloak around her shoulders. 

His attention drifts to his hand again, to the back of it, and then to the center of his palm. And there's a mark there, nestled in the center. The phantom bite of a knife through the tendons and the sinew, pinning his hand to a table that festered with his blood. 

_'You're a walking contradiction.'_

The voice still clear as the rattle of dried bones. 

_’A coward who cares enough to put himself under the knife for a creature.’_

The puff of non-existent breath against his cheek making him recoil, even when he knows it's not there, even though he knows the stench of fetid rot is all in his head. 

_’A scarred, broken-in man with a spine.’_

The knife twisting in his palm, an insult to injury, like he slipped the blade in between his ribs and found what hurts the most. All the contradiction keeping the  intrigue on him, when he should have just let himself fade to the background and let the interest lie on the others… Instead he made himself a target, an item of import, because he couldn't let them take away his one connection to some semblance of humanity left in him. 

_’And I'd be a liar if I didn't admit that I want to find whatever puts that fire in your eyes and snuff it out.’_

And he did. 

He found it and he smothered as effectively and efficiently as only a man who excels in the art of finding what terrifies a person the most can do. He looked at the three of them; an untamable monk, an immovable barbarian, and a wizard with nothing to lose besides whatever control he has-- and he took it all away from him. In an instant. In a moment that won't leave him alone. 

_’How much does it mean to you?’_

He curls his hand around the amulet, staring at the steadily dwindling fire and it's all still dark eyes and sharp, gold teeth pulled into a knowing grin, of being trapped and stuck and red that bleeds in the corners of his vision. Nothing like fire, but every bit the same, because it's the things that stuck around-- that haunt him. That remind him what choice he made, what it was worth, what he's worth in the grand scheme of things. 

_’What are you willing to give?’_

He shakes his head, screws his eyes shut and pulls his knees closer to his chest, hiding his hand, that reminder he didnt take away like the brand, behind his legs.

It's nearly morbidly amusing. In the kind of way that someone might chuckle at a funeral. The way a badly timed joke feels lingering on the lips; caustic and callous. The way none of the things he did worked and he's still here, back to square one. Somehow he's still stuck with a voice buzzing in his ear and with nothing to show for it besides a new dressing of scars and regrets. 

_‘You can't kill me.’_

And sometimes… sometimes he thinks maybe that voice is right. That he won't ever kill him, that he won't ever get him out of his head. Immortalized there like everything else that's passed under Death's judgement and crumbled to nothing under his flames. That where things may fade with time to others, there are pieces that will stay as clear for him as the second they happened. And he wonders if he's uniquely cursed. In all the ways he's been cursed to never forget how satin feels, how teeth feel, how fingers feel, how skin and breath and a wolf's jaws feel rasping over the back of his neck, over his shoulders, along his sides and further. 

He can't help the way he looks to Yasha again (maybe as a distraction now, or a grounding point; his hands trembling)-- He looks to her, because she's donned in the shortened cloak of a beast she probably felled, because she's probably killed things three times his size, because if anyone knows how to _truly_ kill a monster it might be her. 

But he doesn't know how to ask. 

He doesn't know how to say it so plainly. Ask if she remembers all of it too. Like a waking nightmare that won't leave. A pacing, hungry beast in the shadows that sinks its teeth in when you least expect it. He wants to ask if she's cried, if she's yelled, if she's seethed, and snarled, and screamed--

If she can't sleep because there's no rest there anymore, if she can't eat because there's no need there anymore, if she still hears him, if she still smells him, if she still _feels_ him-- if she still can't scrub him from her skin no matter how hard she tries. If she can't tear him out from under her flesh no matter how many times she digs, if she still flinches and jumps and startles because of him-- If she still closes doors, locks them tight, and thinks about how he might still be waiting behind them even when they both know he's not. If it still feels like she's trapped in a cage, collared, vulnerable, alone, and that it could happen again -- that it _will_ happen again-- that it's only a matter of time-- a ticking clock, an inevitably, and he wonders if all of that terrifies her as much as him.

He _needs_ to know if she's like him--he _wants_ to know if she's like him. If he's not as broken-- as lost-- as alone as he feels. 

But he doesn't know how to ask. 

He's afraid even she might say he's wrong for still feeling like this. That she might inexplicably turn to him-- say _‘get over it’_ \--when he knows she never would-- that of all of them she never would. But he's scared. And maybe he doesn't want to admit that either; because he's never seen her tremble, he's never seen her cower, he's never seen her cry. 

He wants to ask so many things that he can feel them all bundled up in his chest, a uniquely suffocating sensation that sends him hunching, forehead pressed to his knees and fingers tangled in the scarf protecting his neck. 

_‘Why didn't you break?’, ‘Why does it still hurt?’, ‘Why is he still there?’, ‘Why won't he go away?’, Why can't _all of it_ just go away?’  _

He wants to call Frumpkin back, he wants his cat back under his hands, but he can't take that small comfort away from her, even if it feels like he's drowning in his own thoughts. There's a question twisting up his throat from the choking murk and he needs to ask something, shatter the silence that's devouring his skull, the repeated mantras nearly ear splittingly loud in the quiet surrounding him. 

“Does it ever go away?” The question slips out before he can stop it, legs still pulled up to his chest, head bowed, afraid to look over and see her reaction.

There's a moment of silence, a moment that expands into an eternity of crackling wood in a dying fire. 

“No...” she says and he glances up at the finality in her voice, her face lit in the last vestiges of flames. 

She pats Frumpkin's side, gesturing back to him and the fey makes his way over. He collects his cat back into his arms, grateful for at least that singular comfort and Yasha sighs. A strained thing that sounds close to the fracturing of ice on a lake, the first knelling break of tension 

“But it gets…” She frowns, eyes flicking about for a moment. “Easier...” she relinquishes almost reluctantly, like it isn't exactly the word she wanted to use but its all she has. Her face softening with it, lips turned as solemn as the dredges of firelight in her eyes.

He laughs, bitter and angry. As tormented as everything tumbling around in his head.  

“Will it?” He bites out with grit teeth and an inexplicable frustration overtaking the gaping sense of bleak suspension. 

She's silent for a moment, returning the greatsword to her lap, tracing the patterns again and avoiding his eyes. “It... will.” 

“How do you know that?” He nearly snarls. “How can you be so sure?” 

She says nothing and he feels _selfish_. Churlish, petulant-- he wants to swipe the embers with his hand so at least he'll feel something besides the way the words sting now that they've left him. Because how could she not know? Out of them all how could she not understand so intimately everything that lives in his head? And what has she done to deserve an ounce of his ire? 

“It does not--”  He huffs out a breath, shoulders hunched, tensed against the stretching unknown at his back. “I do not feel like it ever will,” he finally strangles out.

No words leave her still and his hands shake. Because maybe he's already fucked this up too. She's done nothing but try and be there and all he's done is shove her as far away as he can, because while every part of him craved someone that could just understand-- truly know what it all feels like in his head, a larger part of him feared that mirrored image, that reminder. 

She unclasps the short fur cape from around her shoulders and his brow furrows when she rises, setting the blade aside. She drapes it across his, slowly, deliberately, and he didn't notice he was trembling until she's backed away, settling cross legged in front of him. His hands involuntarily reach for it. It's warm and heavy and has all the textured nuances of a predator's fur; grounding, but not oppressive. 

“I know.” She says after a moment. 

He looks up at her, remembers the one time he's seen her falter, fall to her knees, and a scream that tore from the pit of her at the foot of a grave.

__

_“I've never seen her fall apart like that you know. Not once.” Lorenzo's voice is wistful and hungry; the low rumble of an admiring hum bleeding into the air in a wolf's anticipatory growl._

_Fingers curl around the back of his neck, digging in where  they can, nails pinching with a warning bite._

_“Not like you did.” Hot breath rakes over the edge of his ear; like the slow drag of nails and teeth and fingers down his spine._

__

She didn't break until she knew Molly was gone. She didn't waver until she was met with the shoddy grave they dug beside the road on the back of a mistake they all made. He doesn't understand why, he doesn't understand why she didn't fall apart. 

“Why did you not…." He starts and falters. He's not sure how to articulate this fully.  He's not sure how to come out and ask why she didn't… why she didn't fall beneath it all?

“I did.” She says after a moment, ducking her head and he's not sure how she knows what he's asking but the way she palpitates at the middle of her palm with her thumb lets him know she's uneasy with the subject, that she's all too aware what he's referring to.

“But I-- I'm used to… It's not-- I've--” She sighs, glancing up, gesturing to the tents further off. “Molly’s helped... and Beau.” Her voice turns soft at the monk's name, a small smile on her lips that becomes sheepish. “She's helped-- been helping. With the nightmares and, ah...mem--”  Yasha swallows, voice dipping and cracking on the word. “Memories... She talked to me and I told her things and she... she's helped talk me through them, she listened… and she's still helping me through them.” 

A foundation. 

He thinks maybe that's what's keeping Yasha tethered. That she has people to fall back on, people to focus on, people to rely on. And he has Nott, he has some of them, but he can't _allow_ himself to truly tether himself to them, to use them as anchors. His anchor has to be the amulet on his neck, his anchor has to be his past-- his parents-- Ikithon. 

“And when I-- when he…” She huffs out a breath, fingers curling into fists. “I focused on something, I clung to something and I'm not sure if it was her or all of you or something else, but I know I needed to protect...and I needed to be stronger than myself.” A muscle jumps in her jaw, the sound of teeth grinding is loud in the relative quiet. “I couldn't lose another.” 

She meets his eyes and there's a loss reflected there he knows all too intimately. “I can't lose anymore.” 

She shakes her head, hunching over, hiding her face in her palms and sighing out a strained thready breath. “When I thought Molly was gone… all I could think about was how it happened again.” She laughs, a tiny, withered, chuckle.  “I let it happen again, and I-- I wasn't going to let it happen to any of you.” 

She drops her hands, glances to him and her face is drawn, distressed, brows furrowed, face near to crumpling. “But then I did it again anyways… and we nearly lost you...because of me.” 

They sit in the quiet after that, him unsure how to reply to that, her distress bleeding into the air, because he didn't think it would weigh on her so heavily. If he just… fell between the cracks, if he just stopped. The biting wind tugs at Yasha’s hair and he watches it, the beginnings of that same fade to white beginning to return where it had been mercilessly removed.

“Caleb,” she starts after a moment, propping her elbows on her knees and leaning forward. 

“Ja…” He glances up from where he's been parting the same furrow in Frumpkin's fur for the past few minutes. 

“I… I need to apologize. And you don't have to accept it and I understand if you won't but…”  She sighs, rubbing at her forearm and fiddling with the gauntlet. “No one should have been made to do that.” She looks up and he meets her eyes and it's all regret.  “I shouldn't have chosen either of you.”

__

_“You want me to just have him take your place then, huh? You already condemned him once but I'm sure he won't even care if you do it again will he?” Lorenzo spits, fingers closing around Yasha's throat, digging into the flesh above the collar until his knuckles turn stark white._

__

 

The third time she refused to make a choice and she nearly paid for it. If the others hadn't shown up he's still afraid of what could have happened.

“You had to choose someone…” If she didn't there's no telling what Lorenzo would have done the first time.

“But--”

“You had to make a choice, Yasha,” he says firmly, cutting her off, with a conviction that's far too easy to muster. And it's always been easier to counsel the group, to keep them whole and steadfast than it is to tell himself the same. 

Because unlike them...his mistakes are all his own. 

“I know…” 

“And you made the best one you could make,” he continues and there's the lick of fire under his skin. And he's not sure why he's cutting crescents into his palms with his nails, but there's a tension in him that is wound so tight he's afraid it might snap.

“Caleb--” 

“You made a choice and it was the best one you could have made, Yasha,” he cuts her off, reiterating his point, voice laced with a vitriol that stings. For himself maybe, for all of it...he's not sure, there's a sharpened edge to it all that makes him think of flint and embers. “Beauregard did not-- she would not have deserved… that.” 

“And you did?” 

He doesn't answer.

“Caleb?” She starts, quiet and drawn.“Do you think that you deserved it?” 

He grits his teeth, stares at the flames and doesn't meet her eyes. A part of him isn't sure. Maybe he did. Maybe it's karma. Maybe it's fate. He's a murderer, Beauregard is not. It's simple mechanics and it makes sense in his head, but it doesn't feel as justified as the numbers show and he hates that small selfish part of him that says it wasn't fair or just, or even deserved. It's hidden amongst that same growing nest of words that he's collected; a small collection of advice, of a sentence so simple, but so monumentally structural he's grabbed it to shore up something he's too afraid to say. That maybe… maybe it wasn't his faul--

“No one deserves anything like that,” she continues. 

He glances up to her, her eyes a burning beacon, fire reflected in them.

“No one does, Caleb.” She shakes her head. “Not even you.” 

He huffs out a laugh that hurts.“You do not…” He shakes his head. “You do not know the half of what I have done.” 

“I don't need to.” 

He knows she doesn't.  That she's defended him for less in the past when he's given her no reason to. All of it out of an obligation of guilt, maybe even a guilt he knows nothing about. A loss older than this little party. 

__

_“What'll it be then?” Lorenzo asks and he can only watch as his fate is dangled before her again, the choice in her hands just like the first time. And he doesn't want to be thrown to the wolf any more than she does._

_Yasha drops the bit of paper in her hands, grappling with the slavers fingers, eyes never leaving him._

_“Neither,” Yasha chokes out._

_“Neither?” Lorenzo chuckles and it grates against his ears like the drag of a glaive on stone. “Oh, I'm sorry, but that ain't exactly an option here.”_

__

She was willing to fight for him and he can't rightfully say the same. And there's a shameful disgust curdling in his gut at the notion.  

“I'm sorry.” She says and there's so much poured into two little words that he blinks, taken aback by the sheer sincerity of it, by the weight of them.

“I can't take it back… I can't change what I did… but I can try and be here for you in whatever way you need.” 

He ducks his head, rubbing at bis jaw, at the stubble growing in, remembers her shaving him because he asked, because he implied it might help in some way. For all of her aloofness… she's always been there when any of them ask for it.

“Danke.” He finally breathes, but it's not enough, it can't convey the gratitude in his chest. 

The idea that she won't press him to talk, that she won't force him to say anything, but she'll be there, because he's not alone in this. 

She nods, fingers twiddling and tracing patterns on her own palm. The sounds of night in full bloom, the fire light nearly dulled to nothing, and the silver of the moon overhead bathing them. Her hands idly reach for a patch of nettles beside her knee, carefully extracting the vibrant flower from the leaves, pulling free a book, a familiar one he's seen before and he's glad to see it survived. The way she holds it, the way she hides it, it reminds him of his own books, and he knows how precious a book can be. Yasha thumbs it open, past the pages filled with dried and pressed blossoms, a collection of life captured in her palms, presses the flower into a new home of parchment and closes the book. 

“Who are they for?” He asks as she goes to return it to its home tucked at her side. 

“Oh…” She blinks, taken aback, like she didn't expect him to see her or comment on it, almost like she didn't even notice herself collecting it. “Someone I lost.” 

“Did they like flowers?”

“I don't know,” Yasha frowns, brow furrowing, thumb running over the leather cover. “She...she never saw any like this.” 

Sometimes he wonders what Xhorhas looks like. What Yasha’s home looks like. If it's as bleak and waste filled as she makes it sound. If life is rare. If color is rare. If that's why she latched herself onto Molly, onto vibrant things that bleed life in all the ways they are young and fleeting, but cherishable. Beautiful because they don't last forever. Like flowers plucked from their stems. “Do you think she would have liked them?”

Yasha smiles, wistful, far away, like she's seeing someone else in that moment. “I do.”

Caleb knows that look all too well. His is more for an idea of a person he knows doesn't exist anymore. That whatever the Empire had made her… she's nothing like who she used to be. That he's lost her, even if she's still living.

“You loved someone once didn't you?” Yasha asks suddenly and he blinks, taken aback. 

“I did.” He admits.

She pulls the book to her chest, holds it to her sternum and stares at the ground, hair falling over her face. 

“Well...In my tribe… you mate for life and I--” She starts, voice dipping and sliding, like she's unsure of them even as they leave her. “I still love her.” She pauses, a heavy, constricted sigh leaving her. “But I think-- I think I might love another…And that feels wrong somehow.” 

Caleb frowns, watches her fingers clench around the book and all of it feels pained. Like the confliction is eating her alive. “Would she want you to be happy?” 

“I think so…” She admits, hands relaxing, shoulders falling. “But it feels like I'm-- like I'm betraying her, like I shouldn't be able to fill the holes in my chest because I-- because I might forget her.” She looks up at him, eyes pinched, lips drawn into a confused frown. “And if it doesn't hurt-- if I don't feel pain-- what if the memory of her fades?”

“She won't.” 

“How do you know?” 

He knows, because people don't just go away once you lose them. They're always there. Even if it hurts and even if it doesn't. Loss doesn't mean losing them, forgetting them… it just means they've left you for now and if he was one to put his faith in the gods and an afterlife, he supposes it could mean they're just waiting for you. 

He doesn't hold a candle to that notion. 

He doesn't hold much faith that he deserves to ever see his parents again, not in a context where he's still their murderer. And Astrid is long gone from him and he fears there's nothing anyone can do to pull her free from whatever she's become.  

All he has left are his memories. And he knows those will _never_ fade. 

“Because you are still thinking about her, you are still worrying about her.” 

“What if she-- what if this isn't right?” Yasha  asks, voice small, more scared and unsure than he's ever heard her. “What if I'm doing something wrong?”

“Does it feel wrong?” 

“No.” 

He nods, scratching behind Frumpkin’s ear. “Then I think she would want you to be happy.” 

Yasha says nothing to that, hands falling back to her lap, the book clutched loosely in them, she lets it fall open, slowly meandering her way through her collection. There's a sharp, heavy pain in his chest, the context of the journal changing the way each petal feels as he watches her leaf them.

“What was her name?” He asks when she pauses on a lilac, shades of purple and lavender. 

“Zuala,” she says, “Her name was Zuala.” 

“What was she like?” 

“She was… she was everything.” Yasha reaches up to a leather chord hidden beneath her woven shirt, pulls free a bone white ring caught on the end of it. Intricately carved and nearly delicate. And he wonders if she felled whatever beast it came from and carved the bone down herself. 

“Is that hers?” 

“No, I didn't’--” She closes her hand around  it, hiding it from view. “I couldn't get hers before-- before I had to run.” 

“I am sorry...” 

Yasha sighs, slipping it back into its hiding place against her sternum. “It's fine… I at least have something.” 

She reaches up to her hair, the mane that's slowly growing back, grey bleeding to white at the edges of shadows and the beginnings of new braids woven into it. 

“When he cut my hair… I don't know if he knew what it meant. Where I'm from--in my tribe, braids and beads have significance. They can mark status, accomplishments...kills, where you're from… and who your mate is.” She muses with the ends of one of the more complicated braids. “And I had a bead from her. It's gone now… He took it and I couldn't find it.” She taps where the ring is hidden. “But I have this. I kept this. He never found it and he won't ever take it away…”

Caleb curls his fingers around the amulet he keeps hidden, close to his heart, more precious than himself, and a part of him understands. 

“And I'll go back some day,” she continues, looking up to the moon, the silver light cutting across pale skin. “I have so many flowers to bring her.” 

Caleb hoists Frumpkin into his arms, holds the cat close to his chest, and tries not to think about how much it hurts to lose someone. Instead, he tries to smile, tries to give her the reassurance she needs, dwelling on all of it only sends his heart aching. 

“I'm sure she will love them.” He manages, brow scrunching, lips falling into a frown despite his best efforts.

There's the barest hint of a smile on her face, but she doesn't look back down, she stares up at the moon, at the small gathering of clouds surrounding it and closes her eyes.

“I hope so.”

\------------

In the early light of dawn (after he finally retired to one of the tents, Beaurgard having replaced him on watch and settling, nearly tucked against Yasha’s side) he leaves for the perimeter of the camp. Collecting the silver wire, carefully winding it back around its spool as he goes.

Yasha’s words still caught in his head as he goes, Frumpkin weaving about his feet, and the various patches of wildflowers continuously catching his eye. He finishes collecting the wire and he stops, a patch of bright indigo holding his attention.

He snap his fingers and then again, sending Frumpkin to his shoulders where the cat stretches into a languid drape and purrs. There's a voice in the back of his head, a soft one, an accented one matched by soft blue eyes and vibrant hair that mirrors his own. His mother reciting one of the many tales she knew, with him settled in her lap and listening with all the rapt attention of a curious child.

He's crouches down beside the patch of violets before he can stop himself, fingers reaching for them, delicately brushing the petals, musing them between his thumb and pointer finger. Plucking them up is far too easy, the delicate stems giving beneath his light tug and he collects three of the brightest and most well kept ones he can find. 

He can hear the chatter of the others, Frumpkin standing up on his shoulders at the sound of footsteps and the shift of underbrush. When he stands and turns around he's not surprised to see it's Yasha, her eyes flicking curiously to the collection in his palms and to the dollops of indigo life behind  him.

“My mother…" He starts and her attention zeroes back in on him. “She used to tell me this story.”

Yasha says nothing, arms crossing, but not in a closed off manner, more a silent sign that she won't speak until he's finished here. 

“There was an explorer-- a, ah, purveyor of new lands, I suppose, and one day he found himself in a place far different from his home,” he continues, the story bleeding through his thoughts, the memory of his mother holding up a violet as she spoke, letting him cup it in hands far less scarred and miniscule compared to his now. “It was a strange land, a foreign one, one of new colors and sights and the flora and fauna were nothing he had ever seen before.”

Yasha’s eyes dart to the collections the forest and the meadow have to offer for a moment and he knows she hasn't missed the parallel here.

“And it was when he was walking along a new path, that there was an odor, not an unpleasant one, but something nearly sweet. He looked up to the trees and around at the bushes, but he couldn't find the source.” He pinches one of the blossoms between his fingers. “Not until he looked beneath his feet. To small, tiny blossoms, crushed underfoot. Clumsily, mistakenly, and all without a second thought. And what was before an accident he did on purpose, to replicate it, see if it was truly the source.” He laughs thinly, fingers musing over the petals, glancing up at her. “And it was.” 

Caleb holds out the sprigs of violet, avoiding her eyes, resisting the urge to shuffle in place and relieve the nervous tension under his skin. His mother's voice a clear bell in his head; ‘Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.’ And maybe he hadn't thought much of it. Of her story, of her words, of the quotes and pieces of literature she shared with him, even as he memorized them, even now as he recalls them so perfectly when the exact cadence of her voice has wavered to the throes of time. He hasn't forgotten what she said-- he'll never forget the things she told him.

“He called it a forgiveness flower... For in the same breadth he condemned it, it gave its own form of forgiveness instantaneously, as if no grievance had been done.” His mother's voice a perfect overlay of his own in his head, as if she's beside him again, a hand on his shoulder, a silent phantom encouragement to heal these wounds, to help where he can...

Yasha carefully accepts it, something unreadable in her expression, pulling free the book and settling the new addition among them. “Thank you, Caleb.”  

There's  a thousand unspoken words in her gratitude. Just like all of the unspoken things in his tale, all the ways he can't properly articulate himself to her. But he thinks she might understand. 

He nods, fingers idly scratching under Frumpkin's chin. “I really do hope you can give her all of those flowers someday.” 

She smiles.

\----------- 

The rest of the day's travel is rather uneventful.

It's halfway through when he catches Yasha showing Beau the new additions to the her journal and the monk leaning up to peck the barbarian on the cheek, twining their fingers and Yasha lets her. He also doesn't miss the thumbs up Beau sends him when Yasha isn't looking and he resists the urge to roll his eyes, instead turning back to his work. The ideas for a Transmuter's Stone rattling around. He just needs to perfect it. 

It doesn't stop the betraying quirk of his lips that he smothers with his fingers.

He barely notices when they stop for the night, caught up in his work and he numbly leaves the cart with the rest of them, settling down in the grass a ways off from their chatter, still pouring over notes and occasionally scratching down things that might work, things that might not. And it's nearly relieving, to lose himself in work again. 

The others are a constant rabble at the edge of his awareness and he ignores them until he hears footsteps, but he doesn't look up from his work to acknowledge them.

“Mr. Caleb.”

He firmly expects it to be Caduceus who's said it at first, but the voice is far too soft compared to the rougher timbre of the firbolg. It's a phrase he hasn't heard from a lilting voice in quite some time and he can't help the small quirk of his lips at the familiarity of it. 

“Mr. Mollymauk,” he says, easily; an echo of a greeting before everything shifted. 

He looks up from the spellbook balanced in his lap and the stone in his palm to the lavender tiefling settling down across from him, idly tossing a cut ruby.  The flash of it in the low light draws his attention as he plays it between his fingers and Caleb is caught up in the repetitive motion of it for a moment. 

Molly holds it up between his thumb and pointer finger, a contemplative frown on his face. “I've admittedly been carrying this thing around for awhile and I thought you might want to identify it.” 

“Oh,” His brow furrows. “Ja, just...” He extends his hand for it, trying to remember where Molly could have gotten it, but there's far too many moments in the past where he wasn't exactly fully present to file anything away. 

The tiefling drops it into his palm before turning to free a familiar cloth bag from his coat, pulling a deck of tarot cards free that he can't help staring at. He's frozen, watching the tiefling amuse himself by shuffling the deck, seemingly not noticing Caleb hasn't moved to actually do what's asked of him until Molly glances up and pauses, raising a brow. 

“Did you want a reading?” 

“Oh, nein-- no, I should--” He holds up the ruby as his only answer, deflecting the question and ducking his head, flipping the pages to the Identify spell, pulling free the necessary components for the ritual casting. A lavender hand comes to rest on the open book and he looks back up.

“It wouldn't be a problem,” Molly says with a patient smile, “I can wait until you're done.”

Caleb frowns, smoothing his thumb over the face of the ruby. “I do not want to make you sit here and watch me mutter to myself for ten minutes.” 

Molly tilts his head, fanning the cards. “I'm sure I can entertain myself.” 

He nods, turning back to the ruby, setting it in the center of the inked runic circle spanning the two pages, sets a pearl at the top of the circle and an owl feather along the bottom. Mutters the incantation with Frumpkin purring away, draped around his neck and he focuses on the flighty thrum from the cat's chest and the occasional content, soft rumble. 

There's a small flare of light, the pearl and feather turning white-hot for an instant and he blinks. The information he gains is always odd, like someone's slipped the knowledge into his head without him recalling learning it. He blinks again, collecting the components and stuffing them back into the coat before grabbing the ruby. He pinches it between two fingers, holding it up so he can barely see the silhouette of the tiefling through a veil of red. 

“Smash this on the ground when you need it most.” He palms it, looking at the tiefling who's raised a skeptical brow at the instruction.  “Help will appear, but do not get too close to it.” 

“Cryptic,” Molly says with an amused smirk. 

“If I told you everything it would not be a surprise,” Caleb says and he doesn't miss the way Molly narrows his eyes and seems to assess whether he's telling a joke or not. He saves him the pain, extending the ruby towards him. “Trust me when I say it'll help out in a battle one day.” 

Molly hums, palming the gem and nodding. “I trust you.” 

He can't help the blink or the way his brow scrunches at that. He's not sure what he's done in the past few weeks to garner any amount of trust from Molly. Not after everything that happened in Zadash. If anything he's surprised the tiefling has gone out of his way to still talk to him, to even look at him. 

“You should not...” 

“Why's that?” 

“‘Why’?” He parrots, a bitter laugh slipping out, carding a shaking hand through his hair and looking at the ground and anything besides crimson eyes dripping with sympathy. “What have I done recently to gain any amount of your trust?” 

Molly recoils, seemingly taken aback by the sudden shift, “I mean you've--” 

“I told you that you should have stayed dead,” Molly flinches at that, “I used a spell on you for a purpose that is _unforgivable_.” 

“True. but--” 

“I didn't listen to you and I should have-- I--” He falters, hunching in on himself, hands tangling in his hair. “I do not even remember why I bought anything in the first place…” He laughs, a dead, bitter breath. “And I did not even buy it. I killed him. I killed the man selling it like it was _nothing_.”

“What?” Molly asks, a confused tremor to it.

He should stop. He should go back to his work, stop saying too much and re-seal it all back up. But now that he's started it won't stop. 

“I killed him, Mollymauk. I _murdered_ someone in Zadash and I even-- I _stole_ from him and I felt _nothing_ after I did it.” There's another one of those hysterical little barks caught in his throat and he strangles it into a confused sneer. “So, I don't know why you trust me, I am not--” He glances up, lip curling and there's a burbling disgust in the pit of him; all for himself. “I am not trustworthy.”

“You killed someone in Zadash?” 

“He-- I…” Caleb blanches, fumbling with the silent surprise and everything else hidden in the furrow between Molly's brows.

“Well,” Molly cuts him off, seeming to recover from his stupor, crossing his arms, tail lashing behind him on the grass. “I don't believe you did it in cold-blood, you're not like that.” The tiefling gestures to his temple. “You're smart. You always do things for a reason...even if we might not understand why.” 

“That does not mean the actions were justified.” The words are hollow even if the moral behind them is sound. 

“I suppose not.” Molly purses his lips, looking off to the left and avoiding his eyes. “But is it safe to assume you were acting in self defense?” 

Caleb dismisses the question, shaking his head. “I should have just… accepted the deal.” 

Molly raises a brow. “The deal?” 

“Ja,” he sighs, musing at the stubble on his jaw and huffing out a strangled breath while he tries to muster together the ability to tell the story. “He… ah, well, I think… maybe he assumed I was something I was not and…” Caleb gestures with one hand, waving it and trying to find the right words for this. “He offered to lower the price if I did him a ‘favor’.”

Molly purses his lips, eyes narrowing. 

“I, ah, refused and…” He pauses glancing at the tiefling and back down to his hands and the opened spellbook. “I used magic, because...well, I suppose he did not like being told no, but I should have just left after that. Instead I wasted time rifling through his belongings and pocketing what I could.” He shakes his head. “It was stupid of me.” 

“Did he catch you going through his things?” 

“Nein, I… when I was almost clear he,” He mimes swinging a board like a club and leans forward, elbows propped on his knees and head bowed, “And I was not fast enough with the spell to stop him and--” _Fingers fumbling at his belt, a weight pinning him, a board pushed against his throat and cutting off his air_ , “And he--” _The animalistic drive to escape, to flee, to get out at all costs, fire leaping from his hand and eating up the one grabbing him-- trapping him--_

“Hey, hey, you don't have to continue telling me--” 

“I turned him to ash.” He chokes out finally, cutting Molly off, hands turned palm up and he's stuck staring at where he swears they've turned soot covered and decaying.

It's quiet for a dreadful moment and Caleb keeps looking at his palms, then at the pages of his spell book past them, eyes skipping over the runes and the writing like it can fill the silence in his head. 

Molly finally sighs. “I won't pretend that… murder is ever truly justified, but--” There's a pause and he looks up to see Molly kneading at his eye with the heel of his palm and sighing again. “You at least didn't kill him for no reason. He attacked you, you defended yourself, that's the end of it.” 

Caleb doesn't know what to say to that. He doesn't know how to carry that onwards into anything fruitful. He thought he would garner something; get Molly to push him away, understand he's dangerous, that he's not worth these numerous second chances they all keep offering. That trustworthiness isn't a quality he would define himself with. But Molly doesn't waver in his conviction and Caleb doesn't   _understand_ it. 

“Now, I believe I promised a reading?” Molly segways, steering the conversation away, intuitive enough to know that prying at this further won't prove fruitful and Caleb is grateful for the measure of tact. 

The tiefling shuffles the deck with the snap of cards and quick fingers, raising a brow and tapping the top of the deck, leveling Caleb with a  patient smile. Caleb watches Molly cut the deck and then fan the cards, holding them out, saying nothing, but the message is clear. He picks one arbitrarily, lays it face down on the spell book still opened between them, afraid that Molly wouldn't take too kindly to him laying them on the grass. He chooses another one towards the right and then another, and he's not sure how many he's supposed to draw, but when he looks back up Molly's already relinquished the deck. 

The tiefling taps the unrevealed cards, the backs of them dressed in blues and silver. “You want to start with your future or your past?” 

Caleb eyes the tiefling. “Does it matter?

“No,” Molly shrugs. “But I have a feeling you aren't someone who puts a lot of merit into fate anyways.”

Fate is arbitrary. It can always be changed… if the right tools are found. “No.”

“Then future it is.” Molly grins, hand moving to the card at the far right.

Caleb isn't sure if there's supposed to be some fanfare to this. If he's supposed to feel suddenly enlightened or awakened by the reveal. Instead there's just a hollow confusion by the imagery that's glaring back at him. A cup held in a hand, spilling over with water like tears from the lip of it. 

“The Ace of Cups.” Molly tilts his head. “Interesting…” 

“What does it mean?” 

Molly chuckles, raising a brow, grin turned sly. “Guess we'll find out?” 

Caleb narrows his eyes.  

“Tit for tat, Caleb. You don't tell me all of the secrets and I won't tell you the card’s secrets.” Molly says, putting a finger up to his lips and tapping the ruby laid atop the remainder of the tarot deck. 

Caleb resists the burning urge to roll his eyes, cross his arms, do anything that might give away an inkling of agitation at the tables being turned on him. He offers nothing, simply leveling Molly with a deadpan stare until the tiefling moves to the next card with a satisfied grin. Flipping it without much fanfare and Caleb's brow furrows at the sight of it. 

It's a gruesome depiction of someone with swords impaled through them, keeping them trapped face down to the ground, pinned and stuck like an insect, red trailing from beneath the blades.  

“Oh..." Molly breathes, like he didn't expect it, but that he also isn't surprised to see it. 

“That does not look...pleasant.”

Molly frowns. “Not particularly. Though in the present position is the best possible place for that card to be.”

“What does it mean?” He parrots again, curious and unnerved in one. 

“Mm,” Molly rubs at his jaw, scanning from the Ace of Cups to the newly revealed one and back. “It's more of a representation of moving on.” 

Molly points to the swords. “Something… terrible happened in your past, maybe it's something that happened recently, maybe it's something from a long time ago, and it's affected you, kept you trapped. You've hit some kind of rock bottom and it might feel like that's it for you.” He moves his finger to the golden glow behind the figure, haloing the harrowing scene. “But there's a light on the horizon.” Molly glances up to him, a small smile on his face that's nothing like the usual surefire smirk. “The sun always rises after it sets, right? And I think you might be at a turning point.” 

Caleb presses his lips into a thin line, skeptical and unnerved in one by the prospect of this. “You can tell all of that from a card?”

“Well, it helps that I actually know you and you aren't some random passerby. But for the most part, sure.” Molly shrugs, turning to the last card, fingers pausing over it, glancing up to him briefly. 

He flips it and Caleb can't help the sharp inhale at the sight of it. 

A pale white horse, a skeleton atop it, clad in armor, bodies strewn under its feet, a woman begging for her life, another resigned to it. _‘And on a pale white horse he arrived, and for all those that pleaded he could not listen, because for all Death will come; indifferent and inevitable.’_ Words from a tale, from a story he hasn't heard in so long-- and a card he held in a dream and watched turn to ashes. And it’s right there, held between lavender fingers, and it's all the same, but nothing alike. 

“Huh.” Molly huffs out a small laugh. “You know… I usually put as much faith into these cards as most people might,” he says, turning the card over, the back shining, “but the night we got you back I did a reading, just a quick one. Wasn't sure who I was doing it for… and I got the same exact spread.” 

Caleb looks down the line of cards before glancing back up to the one in Molly's hand. “A coincidence?” 

Molly brushes his knuckles over his sternum, smile turning soft with another chuckle. “If that's so, then I guess you could say my life is a random series of convenient coincidences, all one after a bloody ‘nother.” 

“You think it is…” Caleb glances up to the moon, brow furrowing.

“Weirder things have happened.” Molly sighs, idly rubbing at his cheek with his knuckles, brow furrowed and eyes squinting like he's trying to figure out some grand mystery in the clues laid out before him. 

The glint of silver out of the corner of his eye catches his attention. One of the cards has slid its way partly out of the deck settled in front of Molly's knee, the back revealed, a shiny, silvered moon staring at him. He reaches for it, pulls it free, and turns it over. 

He nearly drops it, fingers spasming in surprise before he holds it even tighter. There's a sharp inhale from Molly, the tiefling leaned in close, but all Caleb can think about is the image it depicts. It's eight swords framing a person wrapped in what could be robes, probably _should_ be robes… but he knows that shine, that dripping sliding shine of satin that rakes so smoothly across naked skin it burns, hair a spill of auburn, midnight water lapping at pale freckled feet and heels, a collar of silver around their throat, blindfolded, head turned away from the viewer, arm bound and trapped by chains wound about their torso, free hand clutching a gilded cage to their chest. An amulet resting along their sternum and--

He blinks and it's gone. Instead it's just a woman, blonde hair, orangey cloth robing her, the sea its original blues at her feet. 

“You saw that too, right?” Molly suddenly asks, grabbing the card from his hand, turning it over and inspecting it from all angles. 

“ _Ja_ …” he manages, still staring at the vacant space where the card was, the after image caught in his head. 

“I thought I was going _crazy._ I keep seeing things-- people in them that aren't supposed to be there.” Molly sighs, kneading at his temple, a relieved laugh bleeding from him. “I'm just glad I'm not the only one.” 

Caleb eyes him, hand reaching up to muse at the fur under Frumpkin's chin. “This happens frequently?” 

“No, just recently.” Molly admits, knuckles musing over the tangle of silver over his sternum. 

“Do you know what any of it means?” 

Molly shakes his head, staring at the card and brow furrowing. “I know what the card might mean, but not… not why the imagery keeps changing like that.”

Caleb ducks his head, maneuvering Frumpkin to his lap, hands carding through the fey’s fur. “What does the card say?” 

“That you're trapping yourself.” 

Caleb looks back up at that, Molly holding the card up, staring at him, and all of it bathed in a wash of silver that glitters across his skin. 

“That it's always up to you to unwrap yourself, that even if you didn't put yourself there it's still up to you to take off the blindfold and move on from the swords that might be buried behind you.”

He hunches over, palms at his eyes, the heel of his hands digging into the sockets, a temporary relief to the pressure behind them he can't seem to get rid of. And there's a laugh, a hysterical little thing, a broken flighty thing, beating around beneath his ribs that slips out of his lips. “Everything keeps telling me that.” 

Molly sighs. “It's your choice to make.” 

He stills; the echoes of a dream haunting him. 

“We can't force your hand in this.” Molly continues, the shuffle of cards the only sound in the chilled night. “We can only listen to whatever you're willing to share.” 

“But--” Caleb falters, drawing his hands away from his face and staring at trembling fingers, “What if it does not help?” 

“You'd be surprised by how much just telling someone can help.” There's a pause, the shift of grass and Caleb doesn't have to look up to know that the tiefling's tail is moving in the same contemplative pattern it does when he's trying to say the right words, say the right thing. “And we won't force you to tell us. We don't _need_ to know about your past.”

There's a sigh from the other when he says nothing. 

“I certainly don't care what you've done. It doesn't define you. And everything I've seen you do since I met you-- the present, the good things, that's all that matters. The past is immaterial.” There's another pause and Caleb is almost positive Molly is doing that head tilt he's prone to. “It's like wind I suppose. It might have shaped you, weathered you, but it's gone now. It's far behind you.” 

He doesn't expect a lavender finger to tap the back of his hand, the one that used to hold a brand on it, the one he took the mark off of himself. “And maybe you have to let parts of it go or you'll be dragged along with it forever.” 

He draws his hand back, looking up. “I do not want to forget them.” And it's the same way Yasha said it, the same fear of abandoning their memory to dust.

And he knows Molly might mean other things, things he still has to reckon with, but there's still fire and it won't leave him alone as much as everything else. 

And he doesn't want to abandon them in the flames, he doesn't want to leave them where they turned to nothing. That feels like betraying them-- that stings more than anything. The idea that he might just let their fate remain as it is when it's his fault-- when his only purpose is to reverse it, make it so it never happened. If he lets it go, if he moves on-- what direction does he have besides a shallow grave? It would make everything he did to keep this amulet worth _nothing_. It would make his continued existence worth nothing, directionless, empty-- far too empty. With no purpose to cling onto, no conviction. And he can't betray them like that, he can't let them down, he's supposed to make them proud.

“You won't.” Molly shakes his head, smile small and subdued, the dimple missing from it and all of the usual mirth turned to solemnity. “Loss is funny like that. It never really goes away, but you can choose to shape it into something different.” 

The idea is a novel one, an idealistic one. One that doesn't feel realistic or possible. He tries to imagine what it would be like if he decided to not pursue everything he's set out to do and it's just darkness-- unknowns-- the end of a thread. He shakes his head, restrains the small broken huff of air that wants to leave him. Because he can't imagine anything besides this, he's never contemplated it before, and he doesn't want to dwell on it.

“Have you ever lost anyone?” He asks instead, seeking a distraction from the bleak end looping in his head. 

Molly chuckles, shaking his head and gesturing to his temple. “I wouldn't remember if I had.” 

“Then how would you know?” Caleb asks, brow furrowing.  

“I've seen it.” Molly looks up and Caleb follows his gaze, to the lingering presence of clouds against the dark, like staining blots of ink that shine oddly in the silver of moonlight.  “I've seen the way it can turn blackened, the way it can cripple, how it feeds and festers… And I've seen it change.” Caleb isn't looking at the clouds anymore and he doesn't miss the way Molly smiles, wistful and wandering, _fond_ , as he stares up at the vestiges of a storm. “I've seen it become something beautiful.” 

He thinks of Yasha and a collection of flowers. Of Molly buying silk ones; permanent, never-aging, handing them to the barbarian under the cover of lights and festivities that danced like fire in the depths of jewelry and scattered across a coat bled with life. A sad smile exchanged for a warm one, and everything he knew about the two is so much more than it used to be. 

“How do I tell them?” He breathes finally, head bowed. 

“Start from the beginning.” Molly says, like it's just that simple. 

Caleb sighs, the weight of a thousand different words on his shoulders. A lament he already wove once still stinging on his lips even from what feels like a lifetime ago when Beauregard pried it from him. This time he has a choice. He doesn't have to tell them what he's done, he doesn't have to risk their judgement, their ire, their disgust. And there's that crippled, curled, pathetic part of him that wants them to look at him, see a monster, point their fingers and tell him to leave, let him know that he's as wretched and worthless as he feels, because that would validate all of it, that would make sense. That would be easy. But he knows-- he knows they won't do that and that's almost more terrifying than the belief that they might hate him for all of it. 

They offer second chances like it costs _nothing._  Extending their hands with kind smiles, comfort, all of it so easy to give and he doesn't understand it. Why it's so easy for them to forgive him, forgive anyone, to give anyone like him a second chance at anything. He's everything they should despise, everything they should just pity, everything they should look down on from their pedestals instead of reaching down to pull him out of the dirt. 

And he's hurt them. He's hurt all of them. He's done terrible things, he's done nothing to earn their forgiveness and yet-- and yet they still offer it. There's a phrase caught at the end of his tongue, a weight behind his sternum as heavy as the faint memory of swiping oil across his lips and asking something unforgivable of the other. He cards a shaky hand through his hair, bows his head, and he can't look Molly in the eyes because all he remembers is trust, a trust in him that he betrayed and he's still never properly atoned for any of it and yet the tiefling already let it pass. _‘Water under the bridge, Caleb. Don't worry about it.’_ Even for words he spat in ire, with venom, with the intent to hurt, because maybe he's always been cruel at heart… and maybe he just wanted someone else to hurt as much as him. But Molly forgave that too. Swept it away like it didn't matter. He's forgiven him for far too much, trusted him far too much...

“I am sorry.” He manages and it burns in such a different way that it's odd. He breathes and its easier, like there's a stone that's been dislodged from over his chest. Like one of those swords pinning him through has been yanked out and whatever venom that's been curdling inside him is slowly escaping from the wound. 

“I know.”

And Caleb looks up at that and it's all violet. The tiefling with his knees drawn up, elbows propped on them and a card he's turning between his fingertips, balanced at the corners and he glances up without a visible smile this time,  but everything more meaningful in his eyes. Caleb thinks about the petals of violets pressed between parchment, preserved, kept and revered. All of it forgiveness... Violet forgiveness. 

“Did you want to tell them tonight?” Molly asks, glancing to the card then him.

Caleb goes to shake his head, but stops. If he says no now he might run from it forever. And he's already told the story once. They already know the ending of it… He could try to tell them. He should try…

“Ja, I…” He nods. “I think so.” 

Molly gets to his feet, pocketing the tarot cards and swiping the spell book up before he can reach for it, clapping it shut and extending his other hand. “Lets go get the others then.” 

Caleb eyes the hand, contemplates taking it all back, staying where he is, hunching into his coat and the new scarf that bleeds like so many colors. He contemplates refusing, but Molly just waits patiently, not faltering, hand extended in a silent offering. 

And he takes it.

\---------- 

The fire dances in the corners of his peripheral and he refuses to look at it. It's all a reminder. The hiss of crackling wood, the roar of fire, the terrible screeching of an inferno-- and he hadn't known fire could be that loud until it engulfed the house and it yelled its chorus to the heavens that looked down upon it and felt nothing for its pleas.

Death rides a pale white horse, Death arrives in plumes of smoke, Death falls in glowing cinders from the sky that drift into ash. Death is him; wreathed in a silhouette of hell-fire and crumbled at the base of a lifetime he took away. But unlike Death he heard their pleas, he heard their begging, and he was not indifferent-- he was weak.  

Caleb wrings his hands, muses at the bandages concealing his arms, the scars, the ones from so long ago and the ones from now. He's not sure how to start this, how to just say it. The words sit on his tongue, bitter, smoke-laced, ashen and heavy. 

“This is…” He looks down, shakes his head and kneads at the side of his jaw, a heavy huff of air leaving him. “This is the story of how I…” He starts and falters again, trailing off into silence and he listens to them,  their patient silence palpable. 

He glances to Beau, to Nott, to Yasha and Molly and the others and he can stop this. He doesn't have to continue. He can walk away and never let this slip out of him. But there's more swords, more things holding him down, and he doesn't like how they feel now that he knows they exist. Now that he knows he's trapping himself. That the blindfold, and the chains, and the shackles and the cage are his and no one else's anymore. He closes his eyes; grabs the hilt of that blade in his mind’s eyes, unlatches the door to a wrought iron cage, lifts up a wicker basket laced with ash-- 

“This is the story of how I murdered my mother and father.”

\--and he lets it free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> future:Ace of Cups  
> Present; Ten of Swords  
> Past; Death
> 
> Additional draw (obstacle); Eight of Swords. 
> 
> Old trauma needs to be addressed as much as new trauma. 🖒 The new will be addressed more soon. 
> 
> \--Yasha’s hair thing is based off of a little thing that happened in ep. 17. where an NPC commented on Yasha having an unusual [hair] style and that he had seen it on the frontlines, implying he knew she was Xhorhasian in some way because of it. Which triggered my Tolkien dwarf brain and Nordic customs brain and went -- beads and braids /important./  
> A massive thank you to everyone who's still here, new, been here since the beginning, and everything in between <3 I never expected this story to get near the attention it has, and while compared to others it might not be as much, it feels like a fricking whole lot to me. And I'm grateful for all of you, the commenters the kudo leavers, the silent lurkers and perusers, you all make this worthwhile to share and put out there. And I know this story is a lot of words and it's a lot of emotions and a lot ot heavy subjects to handle and probably read about, so to anyone who's made it this far I'm astounded by you and I can't thank you enough for reading my work and making it this far. My writing style has changed since first starting this story and while part of me wants to go back and rework a lot of it I think I might just leave it as it is. Preserved. There's a lot of growth in a lot of ways in here and I think I'll keep it to look back on. 
> 
> I love all of you all and your continued support for this story is greatly appreciated.
> 
> ❤ Thank you from the bottom of my heart❤
> 
> -Ara


	22. Towards

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Added a few more tags for previous stuff I didn't properly warn for,, I am mega bad at tagging. apologies.
> 
> still unbeted, apologies for typos or missing words,,,

_’What are you trying to tell me?’_

Molly glances up to the moon hanging above and then back down to the card in his hands. He flips it, balancing it between his fingers and the Ace of Cups glares back at him. He's almost infinitely glad Caleb has no idea what the cards mean, what the implications for some of them are. That this one in particular can mean emotional healing… but it can also mean _other_ things. And Molly isn't sure why the Moonweaver specifically guided Caleb's hand to choose it. He won't pretend like she isn't influencing something here, because she's had her hands in aspects of his life he never fathomed. And these cards are definitely one of them now. 

“I am sorry.” 

He freezes at that, breath hitching, eyes flitting up from the card to Caleb. The wizard's head is bowed, eyes downcast; the picture of repentance. 

“I know.” And he does. 

Because the way Caleb said it this time is nothing like before. It's clear, its sincere, and it's hard for him to say. Blue eyes meet his and it's all bathed in silvered moonlight and Molly's thoughts keep looping on the Ace of Cups card clutched in his fingers. 

“Did you want to tell them tonight?” 

Caleb nods, ducking his head. “Ja, I… I think so.” 

It's a step forward. A series of actions and decisions in the right direction and Molly scoops up the tome, pockets the deck, and extends an offering towards the wizard. He's not sure what he expects. He's not even sure what he'll do if Caleb brushes him off and stands on his own. The man's always been stubbornly independent. But he offers a hand anyways, because one day Caleb might accept it. 

“Let's go get the others then.” He says, watching that confliction flit over Caleb's features. 

Molly notes the high set of tensed shoulders, the barbed wire he's wrapped all of his defenses in, the wall he hides behind and peers out from. All of it is Caleb's survival-- has been his survival for so long. And Molly wants to at least show him that not all helping hands come at a price. That he's not doing this to fulfill an agenda. He just wants to make sure the stubborn bastard is okay-- he wants Caleb to know that he'll be okay someday. And maybe that's the selfish part of him. He wants to help where he can. Try and leave things better than he found them. Because then he can at least say he _tried_. 

 

And when Caleb accepts his hand he can't help but smile.

\----

Molly deigns to sit nearer to the wizard, but still gives him the space he needs, Nott filling in the gap between him and Caleb easily. The others seem to agree and there's a mutual understanding to wait for Caleb to speak as well. The wizard approached them after all. Made the first step and is willing to speak without being under duress. All of it's progress and when Molly had walked into camp, Caleb still gripping his hand like a lifeline and tome in his other, they had all known something was shifting in their resident spellslinger’s dynamic.

They've all decided to settle around the fire for the reveal-- for whatever Caleb deigns to finally tell them. And the soft ambience of crackling fire wood fills the gap of silence as Caleb avoids looking at it and Molly wonders if its the best idea to do this here. 

“This is…” Caleb trails off, voice barely audible. “This is the story of how I…” 

Molly watches Caleb glance around to all of them, offering his own small nod when the wizard’s eyes meet his. And over to Yasha who's sitting beside Beau, their hands entwined and the monk leaning into her side, pinched eyes locked on Caleb. The barbarian's stalwart silence speaks volume as she dips her head a fraction in Molly's direction. A silent agreement that whatever may come they're on the same page here. Caleb's past is his past and it won't affect their opinions of the current man before them. 

“This is the story of how I murdered my mother and father.”

“Oh,” Jester gasps out a small whine of breath like someone's slipped a dagger in between her ribs, hands clasped over her mouth. 

“Fuck,” Fjord hisses out a breath beside her, face falling, distress a clear line on his shoulders.

Caduceus and Yasha watch quietly, the firbolg frowning the slightest bit. Beau's busy shooting looks to the others before meeting his eyes across the fire and nodding, jaw clenched. He knows if anyone reacts badly she'll come to Caleb's defense at least. 

Nott is wringing her hands and he can tell she wants to go to him, hold his hand, soothe him, but they both know it might be a bad idea to crowd him right now. Not when Molly can see the gears grinding in his head, the nervous tremble of his fingers carding through Frumpkin's fur and the scrunch of his eyes. The near reflexive, involuntary twitches and tics when he's desperately thinking and trying to pull everything together in a way that makes sense. 

“I--” Caleb fumbles, hand flexing and avoiding their eyes. “In my village there wasn't much opportunity besides a life dedicated to the military or to farming. But I-” He looks up, sweeps his gaze along the whole of them and Molly can see a long dead determination caught in the way he squares his jaw. “I showed _promise_. Everyone told me I would be something more than all of that. And the Academy--”

“The Soltryce Academy?” Fjord interrupts and Beau shoots the half-orc a look, the other putting his hands up and shrinking back. 

“Ja…Soltryce, they, ah, well...they do things a bit differently. Not everyone gets in. Only one… sometimes-- rarely, a few. And they--” Caleb laughs; that bitter dry bark of a man's who's forgotten how to laugh at everything except himself in all the worst ways, and Molly's chest aches at the sound of it. “They chose me and two others from my village to attend and it was--” 

Caleb falters, rubbing at his jaw, trembling hands covering his lips like the words should stay where he's kept them for so long, but he drops it with a shuddery sigh. “It was everything. We were going to make our parents _proud._ ”

Molly's brow furrows at the way Caleb says it. The way the words leave his lips like a promise, like the last tenements of a man who has absolutely nothing else to lose or live for. There's the stone drop of worry dragging his gut towards his feet and he can't help the way he props his elbow on his crossed leg, nervously tapping at his lip with one finger and other hand drumming nervously along one knee. It's a near damn physical effort to bite his tongue and not ask a thousand questions of Caleb right now, but the way Beau keeps scanning them all like hawks, Nott close to Caleb's side and frowning in a silent warning, all of it stays his tongue.

“I studied there… for a few years. And it was good. I learned a lot. I grew... I got stronger.” Caleb continues, chest hitching, like this isn't the worst part but he knows the worst part is right there and gods it's near to ripping apart Molly's own chest with the way he's saying all of it. 

The way his demeanor has turned small and hunched--infinitely defeated, eyes nearly lifeless, frame listless and Molly wants to smooth out all the creased wrinkles of distress on his face. All of it hurts and he can't even explain why. It's knowing this is the past, and that whatever Caleb tells them can't be changed, can never be rewritten. That he wears all of it like scars, that something made him like this. Stole away that small glimmer of an excited, bookish, young wizard they've all seen break through the surface. That he wasn't always like this and someone took him and knew exactly how to change that. It's a reminder of how shitty the world is and it's glaring him right in the face in the hunching curve of a trembling man's spine and he doesn't like it. It may be Caleb's past, and it may not define him now, but that still doesn't mean it doesn't affect him.

“How old were you?” Fjord asks and Molly's attention turns to the half-orc and back to Caleb, fearfully curious. 

“Ah...young...we were too young. The Academy, they ah… they picked us up at…maybe fourteen… fifteen? It is hard to...I don't… I ca--...I can't remember exactly.” Caleb admits and Molly's heart thuds at the painful confirmation. “And it, uhm, af-...after books and studies and dedicating myself to everything arcane...there was a man there.” Caleb huffs out a breath, fingers tangling in Frumpkin's fur and eyes distant. “Trent Ikithon.” 

Jester gasps again, glancing to Beau and Yasha her face crumpling in all the trademarks of distress. “From after the tournament?” 

Beau nods tersely, arms crossing, leaning further into Yasha’s side and offering little else. 

“I didn't know--” Jester fumbles, looking pleadingly to Caleb. “We didn't know--” She wraps her arms around herself, like she's trying to console herself from the revelation, her eyes already misted and face flushing with turmoil. “Caleb, I'm--” 

“It's fine.” But the way Caleb says it makes Molly think it's anything but fine, his voice cracking and wavering, hands winding in the scarf around his neck and pulling. “He did not see me.” 

Molly glances to Frumpkin,  the cat butting his head against the wizard's white-knuckled hands. Molly remembers one important fact. Caleb could see Trent. And they left him to that revelation when he beelined outside and they lingered in the chamber to case out the two mages that caught their fancy. He was _alone_ out there, looking through Frumpkin's eyes and with the way Molly thinks this might be going, he was all alone out there and drowning in something none of them could have fathomed. Gods he remembers the way the man smiled at Yasha and Beau, even from a distance it made something crackle up his spine and his skin crawl. Like he knew he controlled that room even if none of them did. Like they were _amusing._ Ants under his boot and he was showing them mercy by letting them speak. 

Caleb wrings his hands, slots his fingers in the weave of the scarf and sighs, hunching forward, distress a clear line across his contours. “He was looking for potential, for promise. And he chose me-- us, the same three from a town that's worth _nothing_ in the scope of the Empire. And it meant _everything._ ” 

“He interviewed us-- me… and he, uhm, he invited... invited us to his office and asked lots of questions...got us placed in advanced classes.” The wizard says it like there's nothing suspicious about it, nothing strange. Absolutely nothing unsettling about a teacher, an authority figure showing favored interest in children, and Molly's skin crawls. “And then when he decided we were ready for more… ‘specialized’ training, that even the Academy couldn't offer, he took the three of us to ah... to the countryside.” Caleb pauses, glancing off to the side. “And we… we stayed with him in his home--” 

“ _Wait_ , they just let some guy cart a handful of kids off to his cabin in the woods?” Molly asks, the exasperated question slipping from him before he can stop it. A number of red flags pinging in the back of his head.

He glances over to Yasha who waves her hand, silently telling him to simmer down and he crosses his arms, bites his tongue. Looks back to Caleb who's warily eyeing him, eyebrows scrunched like he doesn't quite understand his ire with the whole scenario. 

“Sorry… I--” Molly shakes his head, pinching the bridge of his nose, tail lashing behind him and he doesn't even try to stop it. “Continue.”

“He was not…” Caleb hunches, grabbing  his own shoulder, hand settling on such a specific point that Molly is pretty sure if he peeled back the layers there would be a scar there. “He was not a kind man...” 

“What did he do?” Fjord asks, the man worrying at his tusk, idly picking at where it's begun to peek past his lip.

Caleb huffs out a breath, a strangled sigh really, and runs his fingers over the bandages, tracing something none of them can see. And Molly's seen beneath them. They all have. After Caleb tore into his own arms under the fugue of a drug none of them know the name or origin of still. When he had screamed at them to ‘take them out’, eyes glazed and feverish. Scars, wounds, old and new, self-inflicted and not, littering the expanse of them when they peeled back the bandages. 

“He made us stronger,” Caleb finally says, and there's a thousand things hidden behind that. “He made sure we could serve the Empire and never falter under it.” He hunches further, head bowed. “...he made us _dogs_.” 

“Do you know why?” Fjord asks, the bravest of them at the moment it seems. 

Caleb shakes his head, fingers digging further into the meat of his shoulder, other hand, shaky and unsure, smoothing over Frumpkins back. “He needed us to be better than our peers, better than ourselves, and he did that in whatever way he deemed fit. And we… we became all the better for it.” 

“We were going to serve the Empire. We were going to weed out its dissidents and revolutionaries and smother them. We were going to make things better..." Caleb sighs, finally releasing his death grip on his own arm and rubbing at his jaw. “It was a… naive thought.”

“What happened?” Yasha asks after a spell of only crackling firewood and silence.

“He… the first time he brought someone back, we already knew the best ways to extract the information we needed and it was effortless. Nearly a game.” 

“He made you torture people?” Molly asks, recoiling, doing the math in his head.

“You were just a kid,” Jester breathes, beating him to the revelation.

Caleb shakes his head. “We were old enough to know that what we were doing was wrong. That even for the greater good of the Empire, this was not something we should be doing...” The wizard taps the heel of his palm against his knee avoiding their eyes. “But I did not-- I could not let them down, I needed to make them proud.”

“Who?” Molly asks, head tilting. 

“My parents,” Caleb admits in a strangled breath, “Ikithon. The powerful people we met while at the Academy and while under his tutelage. I wanted to show them all how much I was capable of.” The wizard purses his lips, face scrunching, brows drawing down. “I wanted to be strong.”

“How did… when did you…?” Molly stumbles over the question, the memory of the wizard choking out the admittance into his shoulder through a veil of tears and distress still a fresh enough wound that stings.

“After a while of torturing and of, ah...uhm... of executing people Ikithon brought in for us to deal with we took a trip home.” Caleb smiles, but it wavers and falls back into a distressed frown. “And I got to see my mother and father again and it was… it was lovely. And I remembered why I was doing this, why I… why I needed to be strong for the Empire. To protect them...to, ah… to make them proud.” He shakes his head, the heel of his palm digging into his eye socket. “But… that night, I overheard them--” Caleb chokes on the words and shakes his head, teeth grit.  “Speaking of rebellion and betraying the Empire and I felt sick-- I--” Caleb shakes his head head again, voice turning frantic and heated. “I was doing everything for them and they were traitors to everything I knew and stood for and I could not-- it was--” 

He slumps forward, face cradled in his hands for a moment before he sits back up, hands fallen in his lap, eyes blank and unseeing where he's turned to stare at the fire crackling in the middle of them. “I returned to Ikithon and… we knew what we had to do.” 

“Astrid…” Caleb pauses on the name, nearly chokes on the strangled syllables, palming at his mouth and there's a stress there, bled so deep Molly can't see the depths it goes. “She poisoned her parents and I watched them choke on the food she made for them-- their last supper, and she… she didn't break.” 

“And I watched Eodwulf--” The wizard swallows heavily, fingers worrying at his throat, hand collaring his neck. “I watched him kill his parents. No tricks, no illusions, none of the special ways he had learned to deal with traitors. He made it personal, up close-- He just…” 

Caleb goes quiet, staring at the fire. Just looking at it like there's something in it.

“And then--” Caleb laughs, a wrung out dead breath of air. “And then we got to my house. And I-- I knew what I had to do. I knew it and I accepted it and I was sure. It was for the good of the Empire, I _knew_ it was. I knew that it was _everything_ I had trained for. It was my graduation and I was going to _pass_.” 

“We...ah, we pushed a horse cart against the door…” Caleb swallows, fingers rubbing at his jaw, at his cheeks and scrubbing at his face before settling to curl close to his chest. “I--” He drops them back to his lap, staring at his palms. “I set it ablaze…” He speaks low, voice hollow. “I watched my house burn and I--” Caleb chokes, chin dipping towards his chest, fingers curling. “I knew what I had done and I felt accomplished for it. I was so sure--” He clenches his teeth and looks off into the dark, away from all of them, the damning trek of tears starting their slow march and the sight of them is nearly foreign and sacrilege.

“I was so sure…” Caleb mutters and Molly watches him swipe at them and his gut twists with the pained way Caleb stares at the remnants caught on his palms like he's confused as to why they're there.

“I was--” He stutters, rubbing at them again and grimacing like it hurts to let even the smallest bit of tears come through.  “And then I wasn't.” 

“I wasn't anything after that. It was just… it was just… just their screams in my head and smoke and I--” Another long pause.  “There was smoke for a long time. Clouds. And I don't remember a lot of what happened there… in the asylum they took me to.” 

“You were in an asylum?” Fjord asks, quieter than Molly expected the half-orc to sound.

“Ja. It, uh, I do not think it was a bad place, but I… I do not think it was good either.”

“Did they help you?” Jester asks, voice subdued from her normal exuberance. 

“I don't-- It's-- Maybe? I can not…”

“How did you get out?” Molly adds in his own question amongst the others. 

“A woman. She--” Caleb mimes putting a hand on someone's shoulder, face scrunched.”Put her hands on me and it took it all away.” He waves a hand at his temple. “The… the smoke and the storm. And I-- I woke up and it had been…. it had been so long.”

“How long?” Yasha asks quietly.

“A decade… maybe longer.”

“Shit.” Molly hisses, tail snapping its way across the grass behind him.

“I… I, ah, I did not recognize the face in the mirror. It was-- I lost so much time.” The wizard rubs at the scruff on his face. “And I remembered…. I remembered too much. I remembered two different memories. I knew that one was fake. That it was given to me…”

“Trent planted one?” He asks, brows raising at the thought.

“Ja… of--” Caleb swallows audibly, ducking his head. “Of my parents discussing treason.” The wizard shakes his head, scratching at the bandages again. “They never even spoke a single word against the Empire--” He shakes his head, muscle in his jaw jumping with click of grit teeth.

“And I, ah-- at the asylum... I pretended, like I was still mad and they… they did not seem to uhm… to notice, but there was--” The scratching along his wrists gets faster and Molly frowns at the tic. “There was one of Ikithon's men and I--” Caleb finally stops his attack on his bandaged wrists and pulls an amulet out from beneath the new scarf. “I took this off of his neck after I killed him. And I ran.... I ran for so long. I don't-- I have not stopped running. I can't…” 

He tucks the amulet back into its hiding place. “And I was starving-- I-- For _years_ I hid on the edges of towns. I stole, I cheated, I lied-- I did what I had to do so I could eat, but it was… it was never enough.”

“But then I...I met you.” Caleb turns to Nott with a shaky facsimile of a smile, the goblin perking up at the attention. “And I was a little less hungry for a while.” The wizard sighs, turning his gaze back to all of them before hiding it back amongst the dirt. “And I... it's-- I am not… I am not a good person….I have been using you.” 

“What do you mean?” Jester asks, her own tail curled close.

“I…” 

“How do you think you've been using us?” Fjord asks from beside the blue tiefling, his voice far stronger than it had been moments ago and where it was solemn, now it's confused. 

Jester nods, smile stretched thinner than it usually is. “I think we would have noticed if you were taking advantage of us, Cay-leb.”

Caleb laughs, that bleating little thing that sounds all kinds of shattered. “That's … that is foolish… You let a murderer in your midst and you never even knew. I have eaten meals beside you. I have taken watch while you all slept and you did not even know what I was capable of, what stains my hands.” The wizard worries at his arms, nails raking over the bandages, eyes darting over the dirt. “You have saved my life, kept me alive, rescued me, and you did not even know what I had done because I lied to you all. Because I never said anything.” 

The sound of nails over Caleb's bandages accompanies the low crackling of the fire wood, and Molly wishes he was closer so he could stop the incessant fingers itching at Caleb's inner wrists. He knows what it looks like when there's nothing between the wizard's forearms and his hands and hungry fingernails, and the constant motion makes his own wrists itch in silent sympathy. 

“I-- I needed protection. I needed safety in numbers. I am…” Caleb continues, pulling at the wrapped bandages, sliding his fingers beneath them and tugging. “I am _weak_ … and you all had coin... and that… it sounded like a meal to me, like a night in an inn to me. It sounded like no longer scrounging in the streets and rummaging through litter like some-- some _animal_.” 

“We've all been using each other, Caleb,” Molly says after a moment, “and It's not like we didn't all sleep with one eye open at the beginning.” 

Caleb glances up at that, fingers abandoning their incessant affront on his arms to run over the smudging doodle courtesy of Jester still emblazoned on the exposed portion of his wrist. “But you are not bad people.” 

“I think some of us have been in the past. But we're changing that.” Fjord says with a heavy sigh, the man's form hunched. “Your past isn't what makes you a good or bad person, Caleb.” 

“It does for me.” 

“Even if it wasn't your fault?” Molly asks. 

“I am the only person to blame for their deaths, Mollymauk. There is no one else. I did it. It was me. And nothing can change that. _Nothing_ can redeem that.”

“Bullshit.” 

“ _Was?”_

“That's absolute bullshit and you know it.”

Caleb just blinks at him, seemingly startled. Blue eyes wide and the unease, the timidness, the strange hunching and skittishness beginning to morph back into something more familiar. Molly would rather see Caleb angry and frustrated at him than scared anyways. 

“If Lucien's past came walking through the door and you all found out he hurt, even murdered, hundreds of people, _thousands_ , would you blame me for it? Would you say it makes me a bad person _now_?” 

Caleb shakes his head, hands curling into fists.“No-- nein, of course not, that wasn't you-”

“Then why is it so different for you?” 

“Because it was _me_. I remember it. I _chose_ to do it.” 

“And my hands did it. Even if I don't remember it. I'm sure there's blood on them. I'm sure the past isn't all bloody fucking rainbows and sunshine for whoever the hell owned this body before I did.”

“And how would you know?” Caleb bites back and Molly's nearly glad to see him barking back-- but he's not done yet. 

“There's a lot you don't know about me, Caleb.” 

“Molly,” Fjord interjects, a warning hissed from across the encampment and the tendrils of tamed fire at the center of their meeting. 

Molly pinches the bridge of his nose, tail lashing behind him. There's a better way to put this probably, but Caleb's being an idiot and someone has to point it out. 

“Look, all I'm trying to say is you can't hold yourself accountable for things you did when you weren't you--when you aren't who you are now. And you can't hold yourself to what your past looks like either. It's your _past._ It's not your future.”

“But it _was_ me.” 

“Was it?” Molly asks, gesturing to his temple.  

Caleb shakes his head, brow scrunching, and eyes glancing along the ground like he's reading something that Molly can't see. “It had to be-- there is no one else it could have been.” 

“How about Trent?” 

Caleb shakes his head even harder, a shaky hand carding through his hair and rubbing at his jaw. “He didn't… He did not _force_ my hand, he just planted a memory.”

“How is that not the same as him forcing your hand? I mean, gods... Caleb, how do you even know it was your idea to begin with?” 

Caleb hunches over, fingers digging into his scalp, a low distressed whine leaving him, and part of Molly feels like shit for doing this, but someone has to say it. Someone has to cut at that bullshit and stop it from festering-- and if it hurts, then it hurts, but someone _needs_ to say it. He has to say it, because it's all the same things he fears. That parts of him aren't always him, that sometimes he's not sure if it's Lucien or him. That when he cut down a man in a shitty inn with a rage that didn't feel like his if it's that other person slipping through to guide his hand.

“How do you know for sure what was him and what was you, Caleb?” 

The wizard flinches. 

“How can you say you did it when you didn't have a choice?” 

Caleb shoulders are rising and falling, chest heaving and fingers clenched so tight in his hair Molly's afraid he might tear his hair from his scalp. But… no one else is saying anything and he has to-- someone has to say _something_. 

“When he didn't even give you a chance to say no?” 

_How do you know if it's you up there and not someone else?_

“Molly.” Yasha rests a hand on his shoulder and he shrugs it off, brushing her hand away with her comfort. He's not even sure when he got to his feet or when the barbarian got to hers either. 

“Because you said it yourself; ‘murder isn't ever truly justified.’” Caleb finally says, looking up at him, a conviction returned to him, and the glint in his eyes looks everything like the worst kind of determination. “It does not matter if I remember it or not, if it was all my decision or not, I still did it. There is still blood on my hands. That does not go away. That is not justifiable, Mollymauk.” 

His own words used against him and that stings. He hadn't meant for them to sound like that to Caleb. He has a list of morals and he reads them like a script in his head, because it's the only thing that feels grounding on the worst days. The days Yasha knows about. When he wakes up on the cusp of sleep, the fade of nightmares on his periphery, and all the truly terrible things he promises not to repeat stuck in his head as impressions, but never concrete. It wasn't supposed to sound like that, be used like that, and he hates himself for saying them now that they've been turned against him. 

He wishes the others would chime in, that someone would say anything, but Jester's  staring at the symbol of the Traveler resting in her palm, Beau is staring at the ground, fists clenched at her sides, Fjord is staring at the fire and he hasn't looked away from it in an alarming stretch of time, and Caduceus is just watching them all. Nott is the only one who's moved to do anything, a hand rested between Caleb's hunched shoulders and the wizard all but bent over his crossed legs, Frumpkin pulled to his chest. 

“Look, I'm sorry I said that. I didn't mean--”

“I don't think the things we do always make us who we are.” Jester cuts him off. “Or, at least, I don't think every action we make defines us, Caleb. Sometimes… Sometimes good people do bad things. And sometimes bad people do good things. They're all just people really…” Jester says, thumb running over the Traveler's symbol clutched in her hand. “And for what it counts I think you're a good person, Caleb. I think you're capable of doing good and bad things, but I've mostly seen you do good things…And I think _that's_ what makes you a good person.” 

Caleb hunches in on himself, hands grabbing desperately at his own arms in a strange parody of a hug, like he's trying to hold his chest and ribs together.

“And would a bad person really regret his past actions this much? Would a ‘bad person’ have broken when they heard their parents screaming for help?” Molly asks, taking another step forward. “Your friends, they didn't break, but you did. So what does that say about who you really are-- who you really were, Caleb?” 

_What does that say about how much you really wanted to do it all in the first place?_

“Molly..." Yasha says again, placing her hand on his shoulder once more and he didn't even realize how heavily he was breathing, how heated his eyes had gotten, or how much his chest hurt. “Let's go.” 

He wants to stay. There's still more to say. There's still shit he wants to understand and there's things he wants Caleb to understand, but he's too close. This is-- it's too familiar and he can feel all those little questions he's tried to avoid as much as he can rising up in the back of his head. Yasha guides him away from the fire and he follows, head bowed, and all he can hear is that small voice in the back of his head that sounds a lot like him. 

_How do you know if it's you up there and not someone else?_

 

 

\----------------------//---------------------

 

 

It's quiet. 

It's far too quiet. And Molly and Yasha left a few minutes ago and all he's heard in those stretching moments of silence is the chorus of a fire in his ears and the purring of a cat that's reclaimed its perch on his shoulders 

“Do you miss her?” 

He startles at the question, looking up at Jester who's watching him with pinched eyes, her hands clutched around her god's symbol like a lifeline. 

“Your mama? Do you miss her?” Jester asks again, nearly wistful, and all kinds of pained.

Caleb nods. 

He misses both his parents more than most things on his best days. 

“If you… if you could see her again, what would you say?” Nott asks, shuffling closer, hands wringing and ears pressed back. 

He's never really thought about it. He's never contemplated the opportunity. He doesn't really deserve to ever see his Mother ever again. Let alone say anything to her...

“That…” He tries and the words taste like ash and so many failures on his tongue. “That I am--” It's a nearly strangling sensation and all he can feel is smoke in his lungs. “That I'm-- I am sor-”

His teeth click shut on the apology. He doesn't deserve to be sorry for anything. 

“I think she knows that.” Nott says, settling down in front of him, peering at him with candle-bright eyes. “I think she knows… And I think she's already forgiven you, Caleb.” 

Caleb huffs out a breath, face crumpling. “You don't know that.” 

“What reason would she have to hold onto a grudge if she can see you suffering?” Nott asks, holding out her hand for him. “She would want you to learn to forgive yourself.” 

He just stares at it. 

Jester shuffles forward as well, sitting down close enough her form blocks out the view of the fire. The tiefling offers her own shaky smile to him beside the goblin. “My mama always said that a mother wants what's best for their child… And I think your mama might want what's best for you.”

“And what's that?” He asks, unable to hide the beginnings of derision and frustration bleeding through, because none of this is what he expected. None of this is anything he prepared for or braced himself for and he's on open waters without any idea what direction he should be going anymore. 

“Friends.” Fjord stands, arms crossed. 

“Family.”  Jester tilts her head, tail flicking behind her, hands still clutching her god's symbol in her lap. 

“People who can help you to your feet when you need it.” Nott says, retracting her hand, ears falling. 

“All of us.” And Caleb turns his head to see Molly finally returning with a familiar barbarian in tow. 

“Maybe...she would want you to be able to...find something more than holding onto the past.” Yasha intones beside the purple tiefling, arms crossed. 

Beau steps up beside the barbarian, clapping a hand on Yasha’s shoulder and looking down at him. “She sure as shit wouldn't want you to waste your whole life trying to achieve the fucking impossible that's for sure.” The monk sighs. “And look... you can't change the past Caleb. Maybe one day, when you're strong enough, you can bring them back, there's magic like that out there... but you can't unwrite what's been written. That's not how this shit works.”

He didn't mention anything about his plans to them. He remembers saying he wanted to bend reality to his will to Beauregard and Nott the first time...but the monk is sharp. He's sure she's managed to put two and two together. Or at least guess at what he might want to do.

“What are your plans, Mr. Caleb?” Caduceus asks, finally speaking after everything, still settled on the far side of the small gathering, a cup of tea in hand.

_”Was?”_

“There's something you want to achieve right?” The firbold asks, taking a small sip from the ceramic cup and not looking over at him. “A goal you're after?” 

The others who've all moved to practically circle him are looking at the firbolg with their own confused expressions and varying degrees of skepticism or weariness. 

“Of course.” He nods and then shakes his head, eyeing the cleric. “...there is… it is all I have.” 

“Is it?” Caduceus asks, raising a brow and finally looking at him from his perch beyond the others. 

They're all watching him now and he-- he doesn't-- it wasn't supposed to be like this and he can feel that creeping crawl from the bottom of his gut up to his throat-- choking, like hands curling around his throat and squeezing, and if the black fringes around his vision are indicative of anything he needs to leave before it all gets worse. He stumbles to his feet, chest rising and falling in time with the flighty wing-beat stampede trapped behind his sternum, limbs shaking and fingers itching to tear into his wrists, through his skin, through something-- _anything_ \-- so all the noise in his head and the larger itch scratching at the base of his skull will stop. 

He stumbles backwards, fingers tangling in Frumpkin's fur, eyes darting to each of them and to nowhere. All of it a blending sepia of colors that are hard to make out amongst the crawling cast of hell-fire beyond the sentinel figures. Hungry tendrils of flickering light clawing across the grass and earth towards him and he takes another step back from it. From the climb of embers and the roar of infernos and the lack of accusations and hissed words. The air bereft of any of those iterations of _‘monster’_ that he expected to fall from their lips-- _wanted_ to hear from their mouths so he could confirm everything he already knew. But there's none of that here. And he's beyond terrified by what that means. He keeps hearing their words like circling nightmares, phantomous whispers in his ears, and none of it makes any sense. He retreats another step and none of them move to stop him. His vision blurred into an incomprehensible miasma of night and color and the film of water and heat behind his eyes. 

He needs to leave. 

He turns for the forest, for the open arms of the trees reaching for twilight overhead, and he heads for their welcoming boughs; a familiar guest amongst their company.  

\-------------

He's not sure where he's going, nor where he's heading.

It's been maybe a few minutes  of walking-- running-- escaping-- His legs near to numb and the trees a constant chattering of leaves shifting overhead. The slow, lazy wind tangling through the branches and rattling the deadened bodies overhead. And the crunch of even more dead leaves underfoot is shattering glass in his ears, the rush of blood only adding a thunderous drum beat to the hammering symphony in his skull. 

He doesn't expect it when Frumpkin leaps off his shoulders, chattering his discontent, and Caleb stops to look back at the familiar who's deigned to sit on his haunches in the forest litter and stare up at him. He tries to compel the fey to follow him, but the cat's ears just press back, tail flicking and Caleb's brow furrows at the fey’s refusal. 

“Frumpkin?” 

The cat just blinks at him, eyes the faintest hint of silver, moonlight slicing through the trees and bathing him in stripes of glittering light. 

“I need to-- We can not--” He tries, but the cat doesn't budge and he can feel himself faltering. 

Trembling fingers reach out to grab the familiar, but Frumpkin backs up, heading back towards where he's trying to run from. The sudden crunch of leaves and hurried footsteps has him retreating, fingers curling back to his chest and glancing out at the path he came from. He's not surprised when poison-yellow eyes emerge from the dark, the frantic goblin nearly sagging in relief at the sight of him. 

“Caleb,” she says, slowing her approach, hands held out, calm and placating; all the ways someone approaches a feral dog. 

He shakes his head, backing up even more and Frumpkin doesn't follow and that nearly hurts. All of it does. 

“It does not make any sense, Nott,” he finally manages, chest heaving, glancing between the fey and Nott and the forest beyond her shoulder. 

“Caleb--” 

“Why don't they-” Another step back, shaking his head, fingers twisting in his hair and pulling. “It does not--” There's another crunch  of dried leaves and underbrush and he realizes he's fallen to his knees. “Nott, I don't--”

“Its okay,” Suddenly there's arms around him, a chin propped on his rising and falling shoulder. “You're okay.” 

He's not-- she shouldn't have to-- this isn't-- He's supposed to protect her-- keep her safe-- Comfort her, he's not supposed to be-- she's already done far too much for him-- this is-- He's selfish-- She shouldn't have to-- why don't they just-- ‘I think you're a good person.’---Why does she-- He's _not_ \---  ‘I think she's already forgiven you.’-- violets pressed between the pages of a book-- violets growing outside the door of a humble house, in a humbler village, at the touch of the humblest woman he ever only knew as _Mutter_ \--- 

“I'm glad you told them.” Nott says, fingers digging into the back of his coat. “I'm glad you let them in… even a little.”

“It--” He tries, fingers limp and numb at his side. “I--” should leave. 

They should leave him. 

He should leave them. 

There's too much-- he's gotten too close-- he needs to go-- He-- 

~~Please don't leave.~~

“You're fine. It's fine. they're fine. They're still here… we're all still here.” 

And she's still comforting him and he knows this is-- that he doesn't deserve her comfort. That she's been hurt to. That her past is something that haunts her. He's seen the way she looks at water, the way she'll stare off into the distance sometimes, the way she looks at her skin, at her hands, at the bits of her reflection he sees her catch in the surfaces of the shiny things she collects. She has everything and more to deal with on her own shoulders and yet-- and yet-- and yet...

“Our pasts may still be there, but we aren't bound by them.” She says after a moment. “We're the Mighty Nein now. Who we used to be--” Nott pauses and he can feel her shake her head. “Who _you_ used to be doesn't matter to them. They've only seen you do good things-- I've only seen you do good things. To us, you _are_ a good person, Caleb Widogast.” 

He can't be. And she shouldn't have to reassure him. He can reassure her. But its not her job to be here. To-- to… to _mother_ him. 

“I am not.” 

“You are. And one day you'll realize it too.” She holds him tighter, arms a grounding vice around him. “One day you'll forgive yourself and we'll all be there when you do.” 

He shakes his head. 

“I know you don't believe it now…That's fine. We'll wait until you do.”

“Not,” he manages through the block settled in his chest. 

“Not what?” 

“Good.” 

“Why not?” 

“I--” He back off for a moment, grabbing at her hand with the missing finger. “This is my fault.” He pinches the area of empty air, frowning and avoiding her eyes. “He told them to take it off because of me. It's my fault they took it away from you.” 

“Caleb, you didn't--” 

“All of it.” He clings onto her this time, pulling her back in, still kneeling in the dirt and trying to find something to keep him afloat.  “Everything… _everything_.” 

“ _No_.” She shakes her head, arms reclaiming their hold on him. “And it's incredibly arrogant of you to think every bad event that happens to any of us-- that anything that happens to the people you happen to know, the people that you happen to care about, is somehow all because of you.” 

“But--” 

“No, Caleb.” She shakes her head again, fingers fisting into the back of his coat. “You aren't the center of everything. You're one man. You don't control others. You don't control fate. You don't control reality. You don't control anything except what you _can_ control. And that's how you treat other people, that's _your_ actions and no one else's… it's how you decide to use your future. It's who you decide to become _now_.” 

He doesn't say anything. Because she's right… There's nothing he can control besides himself. Not yet at least. Not if he achieves what he needs to...

“You're a very… you're a smart boy and I think you'll figure it all out someday.” She says and he swears he hears her voice falter and crack on a few words. 

There's a moment where its just them, suspended in the peaceful harmony of night, the forest their backdrop and it's all just arms around him and him holding her back. And for all the ways she's doing her best to hold him together right now he's doing the same. The way her back rises and falls beneath his palms, her shoulders shaking, all of it feels like some kind of bone deep sorrow he doesn't know the first line to. A tragedy he never witnessed, but he's clinging onto the aftermath of like a lifeline.

And he's starting to think she's doing the same here. 

“Come on.” She shuffles back, adjusting her cloak's hood, pulling it up further, but he doesn't miss the glittering trek of tears down her cheeks. “Let's get back.”

“Are you okay?” There's something wrong, something in her eyes that's too familiar, but he's afraid to place it. 

“Of cour--” She pauses, swiping at her eyes and putting on a shaky smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes. “I'm fine.” 

“Nott?” 

The goblin glances away from him, turning back towards the path. “It's nothing.” 

“Are you sure?” 

“There's…” She pauses, fiddling with the wraps that remain on her hand. “I-- there's things… I haven't been--” Nott sighs, shoulders falling. “I haven't been entirely truthful about some things, Caleb... But I-- I don't feel like it's the right time to really-- to say anything to you or the others about it yet.” 

He understands that sentiment all too well. And for all the things she's told him about Yeza and her time with the goblins, he's not sure how much of it is true anymore. But he understands keeping secrets. He knows what it's like to hide. And if Nott wants to hide this, he can respect her on that. He will be here for when she needs him or wants to finally tell him. 

“I'm not--” She glances over her shoulder at him. “I'm not ready to share it all just yet.” 

There's a moment where the only sound is the continued rattling of leaves shifting overhead, the chirrup of crickets and the occasional whistling note from the wind above. 

“Ja…” Caleb says finally, nodding. “Okay.” 

“Thank you, Caleb.” She smiles, a real one, one that reaches her eyes this time. “For understanding.” 

He nods, getting to his feet, knees protesting the abuse he's put them through. “Will you tell me when you are ready to?” 

“Of course.”

He nods again, holding out his hand for hers this time instead. He knows she needs them, that they need her, that _he_ needs her more than she needs him. And that another part of him needs all of them despite all the little whispers that remind him how dangerous attachments and strings and the people at the ends of those strings can be. 

She takes his offered hand after a long pause and he leads them back towards the others. Towards everything he's supposed to run from. Towards sentiment. Towards commitment. Towards something that feels a lot like family and danger all in one. 

Towards something that's starting to somehow --impossibly and inexplicably-- feel like the beginnings of… _home._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3
> 
> "how does the burnt forest learn to trust the sun again?  
> how does it learn to reach for warmth without mistaking it for war?" - Bianca Phillips


	23. A Garden Grows Atop Ashes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is basically ‘how many headcanons about Caleb's parents and everyone else can I slam into one chapter?’ and me dutifully dodging the fake name reveal from a bit ago, cause too late to go back and insert that in now. The arm thing however, that fits in with what I already done did to him.
> 
>  
> 
> Side note for later shit in the chapter: The flower comparisons I tried to get from all German/Germanic stories/myths but there weren't enough so not all of them follow that vein.

He returns to a quaint scene that sends him blinking and dropping Nott’s hand in silent confusion. Everyone except for Caduceus, (who's making some sort of brew that has the distinct hint of chamomile and lavender in it), has pulled out their bed rolls and formed the nightly pile up like they usually would. 

As if nothing's changed...

Fjord and Jester are conversing quietly, the tiefling pointing to something in her sketchbook and the half-orc nodding along with a contemplative frown on his face. Yasha has an already conked out Beauregard in her arms in front of her and a lavender tiefling clinging onto her from behind like a particularly vibrant octopus. All three of them seem halfway to sleep and the fire is waning into nothing but the afterglow of cinders. Caleb can't help but frown at the scene. 

Nott reclaims his hand and pulls him towards the camp, to the bed roll that someone's already laid out. Frumpkin claims the center of it, turning in place before finally settling with a yawn that feels more for show than anything else  and the fey tucks his head into his paws. Caduceus nods towards him when he claims the space left open after the familiar’s claim. Passing over a steaming mug of tea, the whisps catching the hints of silver from the moon keeping watch above them all. 

He should lay out the thread and set up the hut for the night. 

He should… but he doesn't want to get up, hands curled around the soothing warmth of a steeped brew, Nott tucked into his side with her own cup, and Frumpkin purring away beside his thigh. Caleb looks over at the slumbering trio, at Caduceus, at the other two still conversing and he wonders what he's done at all to deserve anything resembling domesticity like this.

Jester looks up from where she's conspiring beside Fjord in the mysterious depths of her sketchbook and she smiles. 

She smiles like he hasn't killed his parents. Like he isn't a murderer. 

He looks at Fjord and the half-orc is just watching him, golden eyes pinched and contemplative, but there isn't the frown he expected to be there. The orphan without a choice to even meet his parents… Caleb was sure of them all Fjord might hate his choices the most. And he knew there was a chance he could break that finite line Jester often walks regarding her ideas on good and evil and how she viewed each. Her outlook sometimes black and white, sometimes grey, but often young. Not immature, fanciful, or even naive. Just _young_ … And he was afraid this might be the worst story she's ever heard out of them all. That any fables her mother might have told her-- of wolves hiding in the forests and the dangers of straying off the path, of going alone into the depths of them-- that he might become worse to her than the monsters she already knows.  

But neither of them are looking at him in any of the ways he prepared for. And he doesn't know what to say-- he doesn't even know where to begin. It's all out there either way. The infection lanced and drained, out in the open where they can see the remnants of it. The ashen graveyard he keeps under his skin. Those bleached bones and charred remains of a collapsed house. Ruins shaped like the unfurling of a vulture’s wings; jagged, crooked, tattered, and reaching for an untouchable sky. 

He ducks his head, hunches into himself and stares into the ripples of the brew and his muddied reflection rather than their faces. Too open, too inviting, too close to wondering if he'll say more, if he'll spill everything now that he's said the worst part of it. And he doesn't know if he can say anymore-- let alone _anything_ about _everything_ that happened before-- even after-- even the things weeks ago now-- days ago now... he's not sure he wants to share anymore with any of them--

“Caleb?” 

\--because what will they do with it all? They'll know everything and that's--

“Caleb?” 

\--dangerous. He can't allow them to know every part of him, because then it can all be used against him. If they wanted to they could all turn on him and-- 

He jerks away from the hand that brushes his forearm, chest hitching and frame curling away from the source. The tea (nearing luke warm and chilled by the crisp air) spills over his fingers and the mug slips out of his grip into the grass. There's a small sound bunched at the base of his throat and he swallows it back alongside the jumping response of his heart. 

It's just Nott. It's just-- 

“Do you want to take first watch, Caleb?” 

\--it's just Nott. 

Caleb shakes his head, collects the empty ceramic with shaking fingers and grit teeth. He shouldn't still be startling at the slightest nudge. So what if he wasn't anticipating it? So what if it feels like needles dragging over his skin? Contact is-- Touch is--  It’s normal for all of them. And they're all so close. It's important for them and they all readily invite it. Hugs, shoulder pats, cuddling, embraces-- 

“ _Ja,_ ” he finally says when he realizes he's kept her waiting for a bit longer than he should have. Watches her brow crease and fold into wrinkled concern. 

“Are you…” She stops, glancing over at the others, at Fjord and Jester who've gone to join the dog pile with the others, “You still want to stay with them… right?” 

He frowns, thumbs smoothing over the chipped rim of the ceramic cup. “Ja… I think so.” 

“You know, they don't… they don't think any differently of you because of this.” 

“How can they not?” 

“We've all done bad things, Caleb…” she sighs, “we've all done things we regret and they-- they understand that. Some things are unforgivable and terrible, but oftentimes it's us that can't forgive ourselves the most-- not them, not even when they shouldn't forgive us for the shit we've done.” 

He wants to tell himself that she knows. That she understands somehow. That he gets it-- everything that she's saying-- that it all makes sense. That their easy forgiveness doesn't sting like acid where he swallows it down. A pathetic man trapped in a desert who _hoped--prayed--wished_ he would fade away eventually, but, _gods_ , he can't help himself when the water is right there. _It's all right there._ And he's hoarded every ounce of it greedily and with sticky, dirt-caked fingers. Pulled the broken fragments of their forgiveness to his chest, let it sink in between his ribs, nestled it where it hurts the most-- and _gods,_ it hurts-- but it's something-- its _anything_. It's words and phrases, letters and syllables, things he's never deserved to hear, but now that he has, he's collected them all-- no matter how sharp or dangerous.

But what do they know? What could they know-- how could they know-- _why_ would they know? Knowing leaves a bad taste on the back of his tongue. An acrid thing that bubbles and slides behind his teeth. Because they know-- and he knows-- and he knows they know--  but what do they really know? How could they possibly, truly ever _know_? 

~~No.~~

“What have any of them done that even holds a candle to _this_ , Nott?” He shakes his head, digs his nails into smooth ceramic and it all slides along his nerves. “What have _you_ done that you regret? That _you_ can't forgive yourself for?” 

There's nothing for a long moment, just the chirrup of crickets, the rattle of leaves scratching against each other overhead and the harshened breathing of the goblin beside him. 

“I--” she croaks, swallowing thickly, ears pressed tight to her skull, “I-- I abandoned my family…” 

He goes rigid, fingers clenching around the cup, eyes darting to the goblin who's fumbling at her belt. The distinct sound of a flask being unscrewed and the goblin drinking follows. 

“...Nott?” 

“I don't… I'm not--” she huffs out, scrubbing at her face, pausing to stare at her hands before curling them into clenched fists, “n-not yet… please don't ask me yet.” 

She avoids looking at him, takes another long drag from the flask-- that endless well of spirits-- and it continues like that in a simple routine. For an hour maybe, he's not sure. It's just him thinking of a way to try and ease the new found tension, ~~apologize~~ , and her drinking-- and drinking-- and _drinking_ \-- wobbling, and teetering, falling against his side. Finally, blissfully, and after what feels like an eternity, there's only snoring from her. The flask tumbles from slackened fingers to spill its poison out onto the grass, where it can't inflict its wounds, anymore and he watches the metal shine under the stars. 

Caleb reaches for it, adjusting the goblin so she's curled up on the bed roll rather than cricking her neck where she slumped against him. A hand fumbles for his, smaller fingers curling around his before falling slack, a word forming on Nott’s lips where she's collapsed onto her side-- eyes still shut, but moving behind bruised lids. 

“...Luc…” Nott mumbles, fingers clenching around empty air and he ignores her. 

He ignores the name-- because she doesn't want to tell him yet. Because she doesn't want him to _know_ just yet. 

It's another pausing, trodding moment before there's the sound of footsteps, a heavy sigh, and the distinct sound of someone settling down on the other side of him. Frumpkin chitters at the new invader to his domain and Caleb lets the familiar crawl his way into his crossed legs. 

“Hey.” 

He doesn't answer Beauregard.

It's probably time for her to replace them on watch, but he's not tired by any means. Caleb keeps his head bowed and doesn't spare her a single glance. 

“So…” ,she continues with a sigh anyways, “you finally told them.” 

He grimaces. Maybe it's quaint how this night has ended in conversations with the two he told all of this to in the first place. Maybe they're just the only ones willing to say anything to him about it… 

“Ja…I did.” 

“And did it go how you expected?” 

“No.” 

“Yeah… this group is a bit of a weird one.” There's another sigh from Beau, the monk shifting uncomfortably.  “We're all a little…uh, ‘fucked up’, I guess” 

Caleb huffs, thinking about the conked out goblin beside him and Yasha-- and the others and their own little hidden battles. “Ja… just a little.” 

She huffs out a laugh of her own, picking at the wraps concealing her palms. Caleb reflexively itches at his own in response, nails rasping against the textured bandages-- the noise sticking and buzzing like swarming gnats in his skull. 

“How often do you… uh…?” She gestures to her wrists, side-eyeing him. 

“I do not…Not, ah,... it is just-- Some...sometimes they itch.” 

She seems to accept his non-answer for a brief moment before continuing the thread. “But, like, when you do it… does it, ya know…. does it _feel_ like something?” 

He frowns. “I suppose...” 

“Okay, well...” Beau sighs. “And don't make this weird, but--” She wriggles and he blankly stares at where she's pushing the waist of her harem pants down to show the outside of her thigh and hip. He blinks numbly at the parade march of scars lining it. Old, new, fresh, days old maybe even hours, and others years old. “I know that feeling.” 

She covers it all back up and he knows Jester might make a joke about having nearly seen more of the monk than he wanted to. But he's not as well versed in breaking this kind of tension as the cherubic tiefling is. So he bites the inside of his cheek and he doesn't ask her why. 

He doesn't tell her to stop or that she shouldn't do that to herself. He's all too aware of how empty those words might seem. His arms are littered in the evidence of the ways his brain has figured out how to release the tension beneath his skin as well. Maybe his aren't as precise and clean as hers… maybe hers are all self inflicted, where his own marks are woven beside the ones he never made himself, never chose-- 

“And I don't know if you've figured it out yet, but I don't exactly like fucking talking about my shit, Caleb...And good ol’ pops always told me to toughen up anyways.” She continues, hunching forward with a long sigh, fingers wringing her wrists. “‘ _Stop crying. You're better than this. Lionett's don't cry_.’” Beau says all of it in a dropped voice, making quotations with her fingers, face mocking. “You know, the usual fucking bullshit.” 

Caleb nods, swallowing; tongue dry and chest heavy. “My father… he was-- he was a good man, a great soldier, but he--” He wrings his hands, fingers circling his own wrist and holding firm.  “He, ah...sometimes had similar sentiments…” 

“Shit…” She hisses in a breath. “ _Dads_ , huh?” 

_“Ja.”_

It's quiet, the monk idly tearing a blade of grass every so often and musing it between her fingers. There's a quiet solidarity here, to the predicament of a parent that may have been good sometimes, but not in other ways. To the confliction of it being blood, but the bond not feeling as strong as it should in those few moments where it comes into question. The confusion of whether you can still love someone even if you can remember every way they might have hurt you; intentionally or not.

His father was a gentle man, a kind man,  a strong man. Caleb remembers him sitting down in a rickety old hand-me-down of a chair beside his bed and reading. Reading aloud whatever new book he could get his hands on. And even if Caleb was too young to fully understand the concepts being shared with him, he listened. When he got older, they would discuss them in depth and to great lengths until his mother would poke her head in with an amused smile and a familiar cat at her heels. She would always ask what had them in such a tizzy and they would fall into another bout of laughter before they could even begin explain the benign subject that had them arguing back and forth. And those nights ended well… they were pleasant. 

Sometimes though, after a particularly harsh day of work, Leofric Widogast would not have  the same range of patience for his son’s antics. And Caleb would hide behind his mother's defense when things became heated. But his father was always quick to apologize, quick to console in the wake of his outbursts. Yet, the memory of those times never quite went away amongst all the pleasant ones. And maybe it's too easy to ignore that they ever happened, pretend his father's occasional and admittedly rare ‘stop fidgeting’, ‘don't cry’, or otherwise innocuous reprimands didn't stick somewhere inside him alongside all the mantras of an Empire soldier his father taught him as well. 

But for all of that, for all the small things; he was still a good man, still a good soldier, and he did not deserve his fate. 

He has a feeling Beauregard has an easier time detaching herself from her past, but he knows she cares deeply, deeper than some of the others. There's sentiment there. She just does a good job at hiding it under the shell of a callous asshole. And he knows all about hiding...

“You know…” Beau says after a moment, “my dad… he always wanted a boy after all. And boys don't cry, right? Men can't be fucking vulnerable and shit or whatever.” She waves her hand, side eyeing him and returning to fiddling with the wraps on her arms. “That's fucking bullshit though…Everyone cries. Even him.” She curls her hand into a fist and smirks. “Found that out when I kneed him in the balls.” 

Caleb can't help the amused huff of air at the mental image of a far younger Beauregard, with the same nose wrinkling snarl of a smile, giving her old man a taste of all the shit he probably put her through. She's definitely far more defiant than he's ever been. He's always been quick to defer to authority and survive under the radar where it's safer. Charm the ones in power and gain power yourself. Defiance in the small actions, but never blatant. He's never been brave enough to directly punch back.  Subterfuge has always interested him more. 

“Basically, what I'm trying to say is, stop being a selfish prick and a dick. And stop being so fucking hard-headed all the damn time.” She remarks, turning to slug him in the arm and he winces, clutching the newly forming bruise. “And if you need to get some shit off your chest this fucked up group is full of fucked up people who just might understand all the fucked up shit in your head.” 

He's not sure what she wants him to say, his fingers having dug their way into his forearm where her knuckles decided to plant themselves only a moment ago.

Seeming to accept his silence she claps him on the back and goes to stand. “Got it?” 

He nods jerkily, avoiding looking up at her still. He's starting to realize that everyone in this group has seen their own fair share of shit, far before they even got integrated into this party. It's almost… comforting, knowing that there's a margin here that they understand. That they're all toeing the same sort of line alongside him and that he's not the only one who's fallen off of it. 

Beau hesitates for a moment and he fimally spares her a glance. The monk turns back to him and fiddling with the jade necklace resting on her collarbones. “And, uh, thanks, by the way.” 

“For?” He asks, frowning. 

“For the whole Yasha thing. It might not seem like it meant shit to you, but it meant a lot to her. So, thanks for not, like, being a fucking asshole to her or whatever.” Beau avoids his eyes, her ears a dusted pink in the low light, but he doesn't miss a moment of it. 

His own nerves are a buzz, an awkwardness settled over the air and dusting a heat across the back his neck and shoulders. He's never been good at accepting thanks or even discussing things like this. Let alone with someone who's as lost in uncharted waters as he is.

“Is that… is that all?” He asks after a moment, fingers fiddling with the ends of the multicolored scarf. 

Beau clears her throat, rocking back on her heels and crossing her arms, nodding once and than again, shuffling in place. “Yeah, yup, good, uh, good talk, man.” She shoots him a thumbs up and goes to turn, glancing back over her shoulder. “And, uh... fuck you and all that, I guess… or whatever.” 

Another amused huff of air leaves him and the corner of his lip curls up. He brushes it away with his thumb, donning a deadpan when he looks back up at her. “Fuck you too, Beauregard.” 

The monk smirks. “Get some sleep.” 

“I will try...” 

She wanders off, closer to the dead remnants of the fire, settling in to keep an eye out. Caleb sighs, glancing over to the slumbering goblin and back to the flask beside his knee. It's endless-- he knows that well enough. Nott wouldn't know if he used it to help chase some sleep. She did that same thing anyways. And he's not sure he can get to bed on his own right now…

~~“...Luc…”~~

He picks it up, smooths his thumbs over the chilled metal and stares blankly at the bandages on his wrists. Maybe it's just trading one method for the another-- a paltry substitute for a bag of powder he doesn't have any longer. A part of him doesn't care. He lifts the flask to his lips and pauses, an itching sensation crawling down his spine and skittering into his gut. The feeling worsens with the first brush of acrid spirits on his tongue and he hisses under his breath, withdrawing and letting the flask slide from trembling fingers. 

~~Weak~~. 

He shakes his head, looks back to Nott. To the gentle rise and fall of her side, her face fallen slack and peaceful in the throes of an intoxicated sleep. An artificial one. One aided by something that's uniquely numbing.

A part of him wants the same. It always quietly wants the same-- a constant itch at the base of his skull. 

He curls up on the remainder of the bed roll not occupied by the goblin, flask forgotten, Frumpkin curling up into the pocket between his chest and arm. The fey blinks at him, ear twitching, and filling the quiet with a low, questioning murrow. 

“I know…” He whispers back, scratching under the familiar's chin. 

Sighing he pillows an arm under his head, stares at where the flask has been lain to rest in the grass--a dented and decorated headstone-- and eventually falls asleep.

\------

Nott isn't there when he wakes up.

She doesn't come around to him during the entire day of travel either. And just like that the tables have turned. The careful avoidance he practiced for so long flipped on him and it's him-- not her-- worrying from a distance, watching anxiously each time she reaches for her flask. Far too relieved when she drops it and worried when she drinks from it. She's an adult-- her decisions are her own, but they might not be good ones. And he's not sure how to approach this. They all drink-- every last one of them. Except Jester. He thinks to Caduceus and can't recall the firbolg ever actually taking a sip from the tankards passed to him. So, he would have the support of maybe two of the entire party in intervening in this. 

But who is he to tell her not to drink so much though? 

Not when late at night, and even in the cusp of rising, there's an uncomfortable itch under his skin. And if he focuses on it rather than burying himself in work it's a constant annoyance, ever present, always there-- waiting. Sitting back and readying itself for its moment like everything else. He would be a liar if he didn't admit how sometimes, when he thinks about finally arriving to Nicodranis, there's the barest hint of a whisper that wonders if they might have more of it. A distant siren's croon,  nearly nonexistent, perfectly blended with the crash of waves until he focuses on the lilting notes. 

He shakes his head, returns to the pages of his spellbook and away from the harrowing loom of an unknown future laid before him. Ignores Nott at the opposite side of the cart, pretends not to hear the clinking rattle of a flask lid being unscrewed.

Instead he tries to picture the map of Wildemount in his head. Their path mapped out and marked in nonexistent lines. All of it as linear as the suns fall and set. It tells him things are indeed moving forward, even if the rest of it all feels stagnant. 

They're less than a day out from the gate that marks the edge of the Empire. So he's surprised when Fjord's stopped them early. The sun still quite a few hours from reaching the beginnings of sunset.

He thinks it might have to do with the way they've all been running themselves ragged, down to the bone. And if they're anything like him they haven't been sleeping near enough to stay quite as tip top as they could be. They're all a bit thinned out and Caleb's grateful for the pause and the lull. 

It gives him a chance to continue his research without the constant jump of the cart beneath him, or the others within elbows length and all too distracting. 

“Caleb?” 

He looks up from the Transmuter's Stone slowly taking shape, only a day's work more and he'll have it perfected, but right now there's a grinning tiefling kneeled in front of him, her tail lashing and a sketchbook clutched in her arms. 

“Ja?” He asks, eyeing her skeptically. 

“I wanted to try something.” 

He's starting to wonder what her and Fjord were discussing the other night after he returned to camp. What kind of plans the two conjured up in that sketchbook of hers after he told them everything he could-- and ran from what he still couldn't. 

“Okay…” He tilts his head, reaching up to nervously muse his fingers through Frumpkin's scruff, the cat draped across his shoulders in his usual perch.  

She carefully picks up the spellbook, reaching for the stone balanced in his palm and he relents it, watching her set them aside with a furrowed brow. Her sketchbook replaces the items in a quick switch and he blinks. She's already opened it to a new page, pulling colored inks and a quill from her haversack with quickened hands.

“I know you have a hard time talking about...things.” She starts, unstopping a container of cerulean ink and setting it beside the opened sketchbook before reaching for another. 

He just nods for lack of a proper answer. 

“Okay, so, there's this little thing I used to do with the Traveler where if I was feeling a little bit--” She shrugs, fiddling with one of the ink bottles, the red ribbon tied around the neck of the small bottle drawing his eye. “I dunno, sad or angry, even just a little bit under the weather, I would make art. He always told me it was good to talk about it if I could and if I couldn't I should draw it out instead.” 

He frowns, shaking his head.  “Jester, I am not an artist.”

She leans forward, tail lashing behind her. “But see! You don't have to be! _Everybody_ can draw, Caleb. You don't have to make a work of art, just try and depict how you feel or just scribble lines, do whatever-- anything works.” 

She passes over the quill, the inks already unstoppered and waiting beside the clean parchment. He eyes the quill held out to him, a plain and simple thing, bled as black as a crow's, with the oil slick iridescense of a raven.

“Just make a small mark first and go from there.” 

He takes it, brow furrowing, staring at the empty parchment. It's _very_ nice paper. Cotton rag, pressed, hand-made, nearly lovingly crafted, deckled edges, prominent tooth-- and he doesn't want to mar it. Stain it with whatever ugly image his hands can conjure when he knows she can bring something far more precious to life on the emptiness. 

“Can I…?” She holds her hand out, hovering over his wrist, but not touching and he glances to her eyes; open and clear. 

He nods, unsure what she plans on doing, but trusting she won't hold on for too long. Fingers circle gently around his wrist, the bandages keeping it from being true skin to skin contact. He still tenses, the feeling unwelcome, foreign, familiar, trapping--- 

She guides his hand to the page, his fingers pale white despite the cold from where he's gripping the quill, unease skittering down his spine. He knows the way she's holding his wrist is nothing like manacles or hands that would see him hurt or worse, but he can't help the way his heart stutters in his chest. The scratch of the pen on paper is a clap of thunder in his ears amongst the constant thrum of nature and the others further off. A thin shaky line of blue bleeds into life on the blank canvas and he watches it unfold, unsure where its story ends.

She releases him and he takes a large, shaky gulp of air, hand resting on the parchment, quill still stuck at the end of the line. There's no words from her and he doesn't need there to be, because the rough tooth of the paper against the fine tip of the quill is oddly soothing. The sensation curls up in his palm and settles at his wrist, spiraling up his arm when he drags the nib slowly across it. He's not even sure what he's making, it's just a tangled net of lines that don't make sense, but they're _his_. He controls the canvas here, he decides where the line ends and begins. 

It continues on for a stretch of time he forgets the beginning to and stumbles to the end of with a hard blink and a scrunched brow. There's a page filled with scribbles, innocuous doodles, harmless lines that look like tangled nets and fibers, a spiderweb woven across it. It looks messy and chaotic, the lines shaky and uneven, nearly child-like in their scrawl and he scowls at the image. He doesn't like the way it fights the tiny gaps of clean paper peeking through. 

Jester flips to another page, glancing up at him, settling cross legged, tail tapping next to her knee, chin propped in her hands. She's just watching him and he glances down to the new paper and back up at her. She says nothing, smiles, and he turns back to the page, smudging the blue ink out of the metallic point and dipping it in the crimson this time. 

It starts the same, but it feels different. The line of red a weeping violence across the parchment like he's dug into its skin. He drags that line down further, thinks of skin splitting along his arms. Slashes the line across and it's satin in his head. Does it again and it's a knife across his torso-- again; heated metal pressed to the back of his hand-- again-- him; carved and sundered-- again; teeth in his neck-- again-- again-- again; blood on his hands,under his fingernails, in his mouth, drowning him-- again; fear in his veins-- again; bleeding red onto the white-- again--fire--again--blood-- **again--**

_Again…_

He stops, chest heaving, hand shaking, the quill slipping from his fingers and Jester catches it. It's hard to see the image he's created, the red and the white, even the grass beneath it all, wavering under a film of water. 

“Can you name them?” She asks and he blinks, the water slipping from a sheen into the corner of his eyes and down. To the end of his nose where it trembles and falls onto the paper, disrupting the jagged cuts he's carved into existence with nothing but ink. She turns the page back to the first one, the blue one, while he swipes at his eyes, hunching, hoping she didn't see and knowing she did.

A sapphire finger, freckled hand taps on the page of blue lines. “This one, what would you call it?” 

He tries to think about it, put a name to the emotion and it's more difficult than it should be. He thinks of water, he thinks of the safety beneath it, he thinks of the numbness of it. The distortion; perceptions of the surface warped and fractured above his head. The way sound doesn't reach him below the surface. The way hands and teeth and blood can't find him down there. How sometimes he hates having to fight drowning in it, because he doesn't want to face what's waiting for him above it. 

“Hiding.” He manages, and he's not sure if that's correct, but she nods.  

“And why's that?” She asks, innocently, openly. 

“It… I--” It's still slipping out of his grasp, the words he should say but can't find. Maybe he knew them once, but they escape him now.  “It's quieter down there. Safer.” 

“And this one?” She flips the page, back to the other one. The messy, bleeding ruin, the page torn open by the quill in several places, risen, jagged and weeping crimson ink like a wound. 

“Ruined.” 

“Why?” 

“I ruined the page.” 

“Why's that?” 

“There are holes in it,” he deadpans, chest hollowed and fingers itching at his wrist. 

“But what if that's part of what makes it beautiful now?” 

“How?” 

“I dunno.” She shrugs. “I guess it means you can tell what it's been through. You can see it clearly. It's not hiding, it's letting you look through the gaps to something beyond itself.” A blue finger runs along the torn seam of paper bled red where a new sheet is peaking through. “Something new underneath.” 

Caleb frowns. It's just lines. There's no emotions tied to them. Those finicky, tedious things that can't be articulated or pulled apart in so many words. They're messy. They're uncontrollable. And when he tries to put a label to them it doesn't stick the way it should. Maybe it's always been like that. It's hard to tell. He thinks maybe once it was easier to discern the reasoning behind them or why his chest will grow tight and eyes hot, or the name for that feeling that curls around his throat and suffocates until it pulls saline down his cheeks or he chokes on them. Maybe once, it had a name, but for now he can't label it and he doesn't want to. He would have rather they all just stay away. But now it's far too easy for that sensation to come clawing its way up his throat, rattling his ribs in the beginnings of a choked sob, or even for a stripe of tears to crawl down his cheeks and stain them. 

“Here we can try another.” Jester flips the page again. “But this time… focus on something.” 

Caleb fiddles with the quill, fingers brushing over the edges, the sensation as oddly soothing as the sound it makes. “Like what?” 

“How about…” She taps her chin. “How you feel about us.” 

“All of you?” 

She nods, beaming.

He looks over the limited options for ink he has and frowns. “There are not enough colors for that.” 

“Don't worry about making it representational, just draw.” She pushes the sketchbook closer. 

He stares at it for a moment. Unsure and lost on what he's supposed to do here. Picking up the sketchbook and prompting Frumpkin to rehome himself in her lap for now, more as a distraction than anything else. The cat happily slinks his way over and drapes himself over his new temporary bed to which the tiefling takes immediate delight from, a grin splitting her face.  

Caleb turns back to the predicament at hand. He's not sure how he's supposed to depict them all and not make it literal. That seems illogical in itself. Maybe it's like the theoretical conjectures he makes for his research. Which components are best for what? What somatic motions match up with what verbalizations? Which is fastest, which involves the least amount of effort or time? Efficiency. Narrowing it all down to its simplest form. Boiling down a complex concept into an easy to understand and replicable format. 

Maybe he just… has to simplify them-- _this_ , so he can understand it all.

He thinks of all the colors, eyes darting down to the scarf they gifted him. Like a garden of yarn woven into a single piece-- A garden. 

His mother always liked the earth. Life. The intricacies of bringing things into existence from the mulch and the loam. Coaxing color and vibrancy from nothing but the potential the ground holds. Caleb glances up to the tiefling; Jester occupied with Frumpkin who's batting at the small ribbon she's holding for him. Sapphire-- 

Blue hydrangeas, pink, purple; he remembers his mother pointing out each one, their significance, their meaning. And he listened to the language all of its own. He draws the memory of them, he doesn't have the correct colors to depict the flowers the way they should be, but this will have to do. It's a shaky rendering, not the best drawing, but his memory is clear enough it isn't a poor depiction of them. 

Satisfied with them he moves on. Thinks of bandaged green skin and bright eyes; of blue flowers Nott wove into his hair and told him they would keep him safe. It's close enough to the tale his mother told him, kneeled in the dirt beside her as she plucked weeds from the earth and tended to the cerulean cornflowers. The story of a mother who fled with her children from the wrath of a kingdom, finding herself in a tall field of them. Managing to keep them quiet and hidden by weaving chains of cornflowers to drape in her children’s hair and distract them until the danger passed; all of it safety and a mother's devotion. He draws them beside the bright and lively hydrangeas, lines more confident and sure.  

It takes him a moment to figure out what to do for Beauregard. Flowers aren't exactly the first thing to come to mind when he contemplates anything about the monk. But there's another myth his mother told him. The Edelweisse. A flower that grows on the most inaccessible cliffs and mountains, where few hardly venture, and which the foolish will climb the steepest cliffs to pluck. And sometimes the same fool hardy individual is found dead at the foot of the cliff with the flower in hand. He thinks that if Beauregard were determined to claim the Edelweisse she wouldn't be one of those to meet their fate. And if she had to be depicted as something fragile she would want to be a flower that grows in impossible to reach places, inaccessible and untouchable; harsh. But if you manage to make the climb and get past the initial struggle, it is not all what it seems to be. 

Yasha is easier. He thinks about the times she would disappear and reappear, their own lucky token. Like a bad penny. She kept returning to them, but it was for the best considering how often she would finish scraps for them. And for now she seems determined to stay. He draws a four-leaf white clover beside the Edelweisse. Each leaf represents something; like all the tiny facets of Yasha he's only managed to glimpse in the parts of her past she's willing to share. He draws each leaf; the first for faith, the second for luck, the third for love, and the fourth for hope. 

For Fjord he settles on an Aster. And there's many aspects of the half-orc he still doesn't know. His mother said asters were coveted by those with a touch for the arcane and Fjord's interest in his own powers and what they could mean come to mind. His mother also used to burn the petals and leaves in small bowls settled in the corners of the house, claiming they warded off serpents and any ill will. And Fjord has done his utmost to lead and protect this group even if Caleb can see his reluctance and his unsurety to do so at times. 

He draws a ladybug next. A _Marienkäfer._ Forgoes finding a suitable flower for Caduceus and settles on the small bug that consumes pests like prey. His mother used to let them land on her open palm, skitter along her fingers and back onto the leaves they protected from aphids and other ilk. The small guardians of the garden. He gives the lady bug seven spots, a lucky number; the firbolg the lucky and chance addition to their party when they believed Molly had been lost.

It comes down to the last person on his mental list and he stares at the space left beside the clover for Yasha and he's not sure what to put there. There's a catalogue of flowers, their meanings and stories beside them. Useless information in practice, but his mother took the time to teach him it all so he learned. And he picks through for the right one. He chooses snapdragons with the memory of his mother tying a bundle of them above the door or an entryway, or settled in a corner alongside the burning aster. Another ward, another layer of silent protection. They're persistent, they're loud, they're abrasive, and unapologetic. They're loyal. Obnoxiously colored, nearly offensively visible-- but they make up for it in other ways. 

Pausing he looks up at Jester who's watching him, having abandoned her small game with Frumpkin. She smiles going to hold her hand out for the book, but he turns back to the page. 

There's still one more. 

He supposes he should include himself somewhere amongst them. 

He draws the only thing he can think of. An untouchable flower. Every part of it as dangerous and toxic as the next. Hidden amongst a garden of vibrancy and pretending to be one of them. Those same myths come to mind again. Of a terrible hound, three-headed and monstrous, something straight out of the Nine Hells itself clawing its way to the surface, it's spit striking the earth where it snarled. Wolfsbane earning its place on the material plane through the teeth of a monster. 

Caleb inspects the small garden he's brought to life on the page and there's the distant memory of that other garden again. The real one. The tangible one he used to hide amongst, pluck flowers from to gift to his mother as if she didn't know they already existed. The one he used to chase Frumpkin through-- the other Frumpkin, his mother's cat more than his. One of the days, when she was tending to the violets, she turned to him with another quote on her lips; always a thousand tales to share and always a new piece of a story.

_’A garden requires patient labor and attention.’_ He looks over the garden on the page, the varying degrees of flora, the types that all somehow impossibly have come together as one. _Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfill good intentions.’_ All of them growing and surviving and thriving in their own ways and at their own pace; cohabitation, coexistence, and a vein of symbiosis. _They thrive because someone expended effort on them.’_

“Woah.” 

Caleb snaps his attention up to the new voice joining their small meeting. 

Molly is staring down at the sketchbook opened before him, the quill still caught on the last line of the poisonous flower. Caleb withdraws, the urge to hide the art as overwhelming as the urge to shore up and never speak of any of it. He doesn't get the chance to before Jester snatches it up, looking it over. And a part of him doesn't mind, but a part of him doesn't like how vulnerable it feels. Even if the messages hidden in the ink won't make sense to her or any of them. 

“You think we're all flowers?” She glances up from it, her finger trailing over the snapdragon, her eyes darting to Molly who settles down beside them, leaning towards Jester and inspecting the page as well. 

“Caleb, that's…” Jester bites her lip, her eyes shining like she's on the verge of tears and he doesn't quite understand why. 

“Which one's me?” Molly asks eagerly, drawing his attention away from Jester's odd distress at the revelation, the tiefling tilting his head and scanning over the single color depictions. 

In Caleb's head they're bled with colors, vibrancy and life, but stagnant on the page in dark ink they lack the luster of the perfect editions in his memory. A garden he's found himself in and somehow, impossibly, they've chosen him as one of theirs. He doesn't say anything, just taps the snapdragons. 

Molly's face curls into a grin. “Snapdragons, huh?” 

Caleb nods, avoiding the tiefling’s eyes. He doesn't know how to quite explain it all to them. This garden he's brought to life on these pages makes little sense to him in as many words.

“And which one is you?” Jester asks, passing the sketchbook back over. 

He takes it,  his mother's words in his ears as he traces over the wolfsbane, the aconite, the delicate petals that don't speak of how swiftly they can kill you, how they can hurt you.

“Monk's Hood?” Jester asks, tilting her head. 

Caleb nods, he supposes that's another name for it. A thousand different names for one flower. But it doesn't change the nature of it no matter how many different names it hides behind. 

“You think you're  poisonous?” Molly asks, his voice low and a frown on his lips. 

“I…I think I am a lot of things…” He finally says, inspecting the small ecosystem he's drawn, the one where he still doesn't quite fit in.  “Poisonous is one of them.” 

“Oh…”Jester breathes, wringing her hands, shoulders falling. “Caleb,” She starts after a moment, slowly pulling the sketchbook from his slackened grip. “Can you… can you try and write a list of how you see yourself? I don't need to see it unless you want to show me when you're done.” 

She passes him the quill again, gesturing to his other tome still strapped under his arm.  “And me and Molly can make our own list and show you how we see you,” she explains, placing her sketchbook in front of her and Molly, rummaging for another quill and passing it to the purple tiefling. “Would that be okay?” 

He nods. Turning to his own journal, pulling it from it's cradle and flipping to a blank page. This is an easy task. He knows exactly what he is. He keeps it propped up on his legs so they can't see it. Frumpkin still on his shoulder and his only witness to the words he scrawls into the pages. 

__

_Weak._

_Worthless._

_Pathetic._

_Disgusting._

_Poisonous._

_Coward._

_Liar._

_Traitor._

_**Murderer.** _

Writes the last one once for each face he can remember until the bottom of the page starts to overflow with scratchy letters.

“Okay, done,” Jester says after a moment and Caleb peers over his book to the two tieflings grinning at him. Their tails flicking in unison behind them like two particularly oversized cats. 

Jester holds her hand out for the book. And he could refuse the trade, keep his own list hidden forever…

Reluctant to pass over the entire tome and all the secrets inside of it, he rips out the page instead. The rending of parchment tears its ways down his spine and while it's nearly physically painful to damage the book, however, he doesn't trust either of them not to flip through the thing hidden. And there's still things he wants to keep to himself. He slips the tome back in its home,  folding the list in half and placing it in Jester's eager palm. She beams, trading over two rectangles of parchment about the size of his hand. 

He quietly inspects them, trying his best to studiously ignore their reactions to his own. Flips the one done in blue ink over, the handwriting loopy and neat. Practiced and sure with its ‘i's’ dotted in nearly closed circles and the script in a careful, concise cursive. 

_Funny_

_Cute_

There's a small face drawn beside it that look like a cat's but it's hard to discern its exact depiction. 

_Sweet_

_Brave_

_Caring_

 

The other is the same handwriting, except Jester made sure to write _‘Mollymauk’s’_ at the top. He can see where the lavender tiefling might have started the list, but the handwriting is sloppy enough to have warranted Jester's intervention, and for Molly to dictate the words for her to translate legibly instead. 

 

_Strong (but definitely not in muscles. sorry, dear)_

_Kind_

_Smart_

There's a doodle of a book and a small (what is presumably) Frumpkin wearing glasses beside it. 

_Handsome (If not a bit… _Frumpy_ at times)_

~~Bit of an Ass~~

“She made me cross the last one out,” Molly interjects. “Though I tried to tell her it could go personality or person, so honestly I think it's a compliment as well as a reality check. Because-- and I'm not sure if you know this yet-- but you can be quite the stubborn dumb ass. And I'll admit, sometimes it's a good thing and other times… well, other times, not so much. ” 

Caleb deadpans, knowing full well how much weight he's shed at this point and that's he's still probably alarming thin and concave in many places. Nor does he need to be reminded of how much of an asshole he's probably been to all of them lately. He's all too aware now.  

Jester leans over in a conspiratorial stage whisper to Molly. “You can't talk about Caleb's butt right now we're trying to be serious, Molly.” 

The tiefling shrugs with a small smirk on his face and Caleb can't help his own small one at both of their antics. 

His fingers curls around the lists in his hand, he watches Jester fold his own in half with a frown and slip it into another section of her sketchbook. 

“Thank you.” He finally manages to croak out in common through the heavy feeling in his chest and the constriction in this throat. 

“You can keep it if you want. And if you ever… if you ever start thinking about yourself like that, maybe you can read them over.” Jester shrugs, fiddling with a lock of her hair and avoiding his eyes. 

“I mean… I can always make a bigger list.” Molly adds and Jester bats him in the shoulder, all whilst wearing a grin. 

“Don't be weird.” 

“What?” The lavender tiefling shrugs innocently. “Just being honest.” 

Jester rolls her eyes, holding out her hand towards him again. “Let me see those for a sec.” 

Caleb hands them over, brow furrowing. 

Jester takes them, hoists up the quill and, with her tongue peeking from between her teeth as she concentrates, she punctures holes in the top of each piece of parchment. Pulls a piece of twine free from-- somewhere-- and ties it through the holes until she's made a small leaflet. Spends another minute or so drawing on the extra piece she's added to the front before she hands it back over. 

Accepting it with a confused frown he flips it around so he can read the scrawled letters. 

_“Caleb Widogast’s Comprehensive Guide to Being Loved and Appreciated”_

There's another small Frumpkin doodled below it with a heart beside him and the fey’s tongue peeking out from his muzzle in a stylized _‘blep’_. 

“There.” Jester claps her hands and gestures to it with a flourish. “Now you can flip through that whenever you're feeling a bit down and maybe it can help a bit. And we can even add more pages later! Maybe one about proper hygiene and regular bathing since you're still sometimes a little stinky.” She pinches her fingers together beside her cheek, lips split into a toothy grin. “Just a little bit though.” 

“I--” He frowns, ducks his head, thumbs running over the parchment and chest near to aching. “... _d-danke_..ah, thank you-- both of you.” 

“Not a problem!” Jester beams.

“Any time, Caleb.” Molly smiles beside her and Caleb's brow falls and crumples at the sight of both of them just grinning at him. 

He slips the lists into the first pocket-- the empty one-- the only empty one in his coat. Fills it with a reminder that sits warmly against his chest. 

“Maybe we can get the others to make lists too!” Jester crows to an equally excited Molly who nods along with her. 

Molly grins wider, leaning forward eagerly. “We could all write lists about each other and pass them around-- like a big, lovey-dovey round robin of sickly sappiness.” 

“That's _adorable_! Why didn't we think of this sooner!” 

“I don't know, but let's see what Yasha has to say about me.” Molly smirks, getting to his feet. 

“You already know she loves you, silly.” Jester follows, tail whipping behind her like an excited dog.

“I know, but doesn't hurt to hear it again.” 

“Molly, if your ego were any bigger it would--” 

Caleb tunes the bickering tieflings out, putting a hand over the pocket with the lists in it and lifting Frumpkin up with his free hand to perch the familiar on his shoulders again. The fey drapes himself along his neck in a lazy scarf, mirroring the more vibrant one wrapped around his neck. There's the brush of fur against his cheek and Caleb can't help the small smile at the familiar nuzzling against the underside of his jaw. The small feline chirp in his ear sends him nearly grinning, all of it accompanied by the sight of the two tieflings who have wandered over to pester Yasha and Beau. Quickly dragging Fjord into their mess, and Nott following with a confused Caduceus. He watches them all settle down, Jester distributing torn bits of parchment, laughing and smiling-- nearly carefree-- the others seemingly intrigued by her and Molly's idea. 

Hand clenched around his own hidden little pamphlet, he watches Yasha accept a folded piece of parchment from a blushing Beauregard. The barbarian smiles, no teeth showing, but it's still a full one, and she pulls the monk closer, whispers something to her, Beau’s face turning even redder. Jester hands Nott a little square of parchment and the goblin reads it over, her face crumpling and head bowing before the tiefling draws her in for what is a nearly bruising hug. 

It's all a very quaint little scene-- and it continues on without him… 

He's unsure if he should stay back, leave it untainted and pure, untouched where it's unfolding before him or--

“Caleb!” Molly calls from beside Fjord, the tiefling’s tail whipping behind him, nearly striking the half-orc’s arm..“You should join us!” 

The others pause to look over at him as well and Caleb ducks his head at the sudden attention. Frumpkin slides off his shoulders and the loss of the comforting weight has him looking up to the fey. And he's just sitting there, staring expectantly up at him, tail flicking behind him. With no prompting the familiar makes his way over to the small gathering, winding his way around seated bodies before lavender hands snatch him up and plop the cat in Yasha's lap. 

Frumpkin stares at him from his new perch on the barbarian, tail waving smugly. It would take one simple snap of his fingers to recall the fey. But the familiar moved without his prompting, he acted outside Caleb's conscious wishes. And he's been doing that a lot lately. 

The others return to their excited chatter when he finally leverages himself to shaky limbs. One hand tangled in the end of the colorful scarf and the other crossed over his chest and shielding the list where he's hidden it. There's that returning creep of vulnerability. A prickle along the nape of his neck, but it's not the primal kind. Not the fear of the unknown at his back, nor the sensation of breath, hot and humid, on his nape. This is more intimate. It doesn't scream run. It doesn't even scream threat. It just spells sentiment, and he takes a step towards it, then another. Towards that colorful, vibrant garden of them that he doesn't belong to-- doesn't deserve to call his own. 

Yet, they welcome him with smiles and an eagerness that nearly hurts, the lancing stab beneath his sternum a near physical blow when Nott reaches for his hand. The constriction around his ribs creeps up towards his throat and he swallows against it, taking a seat within their little gathering, hand clutched in a far smaller one. 

“Sorry about the... the other night.” Nott whispers beside him, fingers tightening their grip.

“It's okay...” He squeezes her hand back. Nearly glad when she moves both of them to hold his own, because it means she can't reach for the flask at her hip.

He; an anchor against everything she wants to keep at bay as much as she has become his. 

Nott looks down, ears drooping. “I promise I'll tell you… I'll-- I'll tell you everything eventually.” 

The others are speaking around them, maneuvering and swaying like so many vibrant flowers, and a small pocket of quiet sunlight left for him and Nott at the center. 

“Whenever you are ready,” he says.

She smiles up at him. 

He grabs both of her hands in his, leans close, ignores the excited squealing from a certain blue tiefling in his peripheral and the answering laughter of a lavender one, “I'll wait until you are ready to tell me. However long it takes.” 

Patience traded for patience.

If she'll wait for him, he can try and do the same for her.

\-----

He decides to take watch later.

After the sun's waned down to the nothing and the others begin settling down for the night. 

He's not sure how much sleep he'll get anyways and about an hour or so after dinner, and another bowl of broth as usual (this time with the addition of a few vegetables added into the mix), he heads towards the outskirts of the camp. 

The hitching breath and shuddering, watery gasp aren't at all what he's expecting when he stumbles upon the tiefling and he goes rigid, a few steps from Jester who's staring down at the pages of her sketchbook, tracks of tears marring her cheeks. 

“Oh,” She swipes at her eyes, quickly whisking away any evidence and turns a watery smile to him. “Hey, Caleb, I'm just--"

He cautiously approaches, ducking his head. "Are you okay?” 

She startles, like she didn't expect him to notice, didn't even expect him to ask after her well being. And that stings as a reminder of all the ways he's neglected them these past few weeks. 

“Of course!” She smiles, wide and shaky, the edges thin and wavering.  “Why would I not be? I'm… I'm always okay, Caleb…” 

“Jester?” 

“I just…” She turns the pages in her sketchbook and he catches glimpses of the scenes she's sketched. Each one darker than the last, bloodier, red ink mingling with the black ink and he frowns. 

“Can you name them?” He parrots the question she asked of him during the day, settling down in front of her. Legs crossed before him and Frumpkin leaps down from his shoulders to curl up in his lap. 

“Oh… well,” She huffs out a breath, fiddling with the quill in her hands. “I… I just…” The tiefling purses her lips, staring at the pages.  “Have you ever had trouble sleeping?” 

“Ja.” 

She nods, biting her lip. “Stupid question, sorry, but I-- It's never really been a problem for me before. But now all I see is just… all the things that did happen, and sometimes it's all the things that could have happened. And sometimes it's all of you guys dead and sometimes I--” Jester finally looks up at him and he never noticed how _tired_ she looked until now. “I don't like any of the things I see when I sleep anymore, Caleb.” 

That sentiment resonates all too well with him. 

“Have you ever had bad nightmares before? When you were a child?” 

“Yes, but nothing like this.” She shakes her head, waving a hand and gesturing at her temple. “They never felt… they were never real.” 

“I'm…” He's not sure what to say here… any words to console her feel hollow and empty, but he can at least try. “I am sorry.” 

She sighs, tail lashing behind her. “It's not your fault.” 

“I know, but… you should not have to… none of you should have to deal with this.” 

“What about you though?” she asks, squinting at him.

Caleb shrugs.

“We _all_ went through some shit, Caleb.”

“I know...” 

“And I think we're all trying to get through it all on our own…Which is _stupid_.” Jester huffs, eyes darting towards the small encampment. “Fjord tries to pretend like he doesn't wake up from nightmares every night… and I'll offer a shoulder for him to rest his head on, sometimes share a lullabye my mama used to sing to me. And…” She sniffs scrubbing at her cheeks and sighing. “And sometimes Beau comes back from her stupid ‘walkabouts’ at night and I have to heal her knuckles from where she's punched them bloody against a tree. And Nott… she drinks herself to sleep most nights and I'll help get her to bed, keep an eye on her in case she, you know, throws up or something…”

“I did not… I did not know.” 

“You've been dealing with your own things,” she mutters, tearing at the edge of a piece of parchment with her nail.  

“And what about you?” 

“Hm?” she hums, not even looking up at him.  

“You have been taking care of everyone else, but… who has been helping you?” 

“Oh…” she huffs,  “I mean… The Traveler I suppose...” She shrugs. “And I _want_ to help. I want to be useful. And I don't want you all to be sad anymore. You all always seem so sad and I… no one should feel like that.”

“But you can't make _everyone_ happy, Jester.” He sighs. “And you can't neglect yourself for others.” 

She smiles, a small, close lipped thing that's more solemn and accepting than exuberant. “You know… I chose my name for a reason.” Jester looks up at him from where she's turned to fiddling with the Traveler's symbol in her palm. “I like to see people smile, Caleb.” She sighs, shoulders falling, dropping the golden archway. “But sometimes I forget how hard it is to smile myself, you know?” 

“If it's…” he pauses, trying to find the right words to console and reassure here. “If it's worth anything, I think you're very good at making people smile.” 

She laughs, reaching for Frumpkin, scratching him behind the ear. “I try.” 

“Thank you” 

“For what?” 

“For trying to make everyone happy…” he explains, “but if you ever… if you ever need to talk or… you just need to… to cry…” Caleb shrugs, fingers twining in the woven knit of the scarf.“I won't tell the others and I won't… I would never judge you.” 

He has no room to judge any one of them at this point. 

She puts a hand on his shoulder and he resists the initial instinct to shrug it off. “I'll be fine, Caleb. But thank you for the offer.”

He attempts a shaky smile for her sake, but he can't get any of it to maneuver right, and he's unsure if it comes off as more of a grimace or a simple baring of teeth. She seems to accept it either way. 

“Now try and get some sleep.” She pokes him in the cheek.  “You always look so tired.” 

Caleb shrugs, rubbing at the scruff (that's admittedly starting to become unruly again) on his jaw. “Someone has to take watch.” 

“I'll be up for a bit longer…” She fiddles with the binding on her sketchbook. “Get some rest.” 

He doesn't leave. 

And she doesn't ask him to leave. 

She opens the sketchbook back up after a few moments, to a blank page, and begins drawing. He deigns to reposition himself beside her, watching the doodle take to a unique form of life under her hands. 

She draws Trent as a dick, which is wholly unsurprising considering how often, and how much of her things, contain doodles of dicks in varying shapes and forms. She writes the word _‘Dikithon’_ next to it and a huge arrow pointing to it. “I've seen a lot of dicks and he is the worst one I've ever seen.” 

“Ja?” He raises a brow.

“I am the dick expert. I know these things, Cay-leb.” 

“I will defer to the expert then.”

“I am the most expertful of experts.” She nods with an assured grin, before turning to fiddle with the quill, seemingly at a loss for what else to draw. 

“Can I see that?” He extends his hand for it, nearly surprised by his own request, but the itch for the sensation of pen on parchment is demanding. 

She passes it over easily and he draws the same googly eyes, the ones he's seen her depict hundreds of times now, onto the ‘dick-ified’ version of Trent.

“I think it's an improvement.” She remarks grabbing the quill from him to add furrowed brows on it, writing the word ‘grumpy dick’ next to it. 

Jester hands the quill back when she's finished with her additions and Caleb taps the feather against his cheek, contemplating what to draw. Full well knowing he won't ever make anything as good as Jester can. Art was never his forte. And while he didn't, and still doesn't,  lack imagination it is definitely severely rooted in reality. Frumpkin curls up against his thigh and he gets an idea. 

It's a few moments of scratching ink onto the paper before there's a small rendering of Frumpkin, crude little lines depicting his patterned coat and exaggerated eyes with wobbly, nearly broken whiskers. Jester coos at the sight of the little cat, snatching the quill from his hand with a reinvigorated eagerness. 

“Lemme just--” Jester adds wings to it-- little dove wings that sprout from the familiar's back and a small heart beside Frumpkin. “There we go. Now, he's your perfect little angel.” 

Caleb chuckles, reclaiming the stolen pen and adding a halo atop the cat's head. “He _is_ a very good boy.” 

Jester reclaims the sketch book and quill when he passes them both back over.  “He is indeed.” 

She continues to doodle, small nonsensical scenes, some that connect into a narrative and some that don't.  “You know his name is close to Icky-thon.” She giggles after a moment. “Trent Icky-thon. The ickiest of the thons.” 

Caleb can't help the small smile at the thought of the blue tiefling blurting that to the archmage's face. “I didn't ever think of it like that.” 

“Well that's why I'm here.” She nods, continuing her doodle of ‘Trent Icky-thon’ as a puddle on the ground with a cartoonishly ripped version of Yasha holding a hammer beside it. 

He watches her continue to draw in the quiet, occasionally glancing out to the dark, but he's sure there's nothing out there. 

He turns back and she's drawing Lorenzo as a caricature. 

And it's more palatable that way somehow. Exaggerated features, dopey expression, and being impaled by a unicorn-- All of it exists in a fantasy realm that is easier to palette than the reality. Jester continues to doodle, the pen slowing, the marks becoming more careful and precise. 

Until she's drawing a small figure huddled in a corner, knees pulled up to their chest and hair concealing their features. Head ducked and form hunched inwards, curled as small as they can be… feet dirtied and bare, hands wrapped around their ankles-- a familiar scene, but from an outsider's perspective this time. 

He wonders how many times she's drawn each of them as they were within that cell. If there are pages of her sketchbook scattered with them; bloodied and bruised, tortured amongst the cartoonish fantasies she conjures. She finishes the final mark on the drawing, hand falling down the page, smudging the drying ink as it goes.

“...thank you,” she finally says, barely above a whisper beside him and he glances over to her. 

Her eyes are trapped by the image that he knows is him-- some version of him that's as distant as the cell miles and days and weeks behind them. 

“ _Nichts zu danken,_ ” he mutters, staring at the inked image as well-- the distant rattle of chains in his ears.

He's not even sure exactly what she's thanking him for this time, or if actually he wants her to even elaborate considering everything they know now.

She closes the sketchbook and the clap of parchment eliminates the clinking of metal, but the huffing phantom laughter and the flash of gold in his perphiary remains. And it's been a spell and a half since either has returned, and he flinches forward at the phantasmal brush of fingers curling around the back of his neck. He tries to focus on where she settles the book on the grass instead of all the things that don't even exist behind him. 

“Caleb…” she starts, quiet and reserved, “you know how I asked you if you missed her?”

“Ja,” he breathes, unsure where she's going with this, but grateful for a distraction. Unease skittering under his skin and he scratches at where it manifests under his wrists. 

“Sometimes…well, sometimes I miss my mama too,” she mumbles after a moment and he glances over at her.

The tiefling’s pulled her knees to her chest and propped her chin on them. The picture of vulnerability and the smallest he's ever seen her look outside the confines of a cell. 

“We will get you home.” 

“I know...I know-- I just wish…” Jester sighs, fiddling with the hem of her dress. “I wish you all had somewhere to go home to too, you know?” 

Caleb nods, looking over to the others, still slumbering away. “I think for some of them… this is the most home they have now.” 

Jester ducks her head, brows drawing together. “I wish it wasn't like that though.” 

“The world is…” He frowns, grimacing and picking at his bandages. “It is not so kind.” 

“I know, I know,” she huffs, “but why can't the world let you have all the families you want? Why did it have to take one away from you?” 

He flinches, sighing and shaking his head, screwing his eyes shut and turning away from her. “I took them away on my own.” 

“Caleb--” 

“We will get you back to your mother, Jester.” He cuts her off, getting to his feet.

The watch isn't near to being over yet, but he doesn't-- he can't talk about this right now. Not when there's other things crawling up to meet him right now-- things he thought he buried beneath the older ruins, as if it would somehow make it disappear-- make it better-- make it something smaller. He wishes the fire in his head could take away more than just his parent's screams in an endless loop-- that the embers could whisk away the bassy laugh and shining, sharpened grin of a dead phantom--

And the world didn't do this to him.

It just existed. His choices are his own. His decisions are his own. The world isn't maliciously cruel-- but people are. People can be a lot of things.

He heads for Beauregard, a step towards going to wake the monk for the watch-- 

“Caleb?” Jester asks from behind him and he freezes in place, ducking his head. 

“I am tired…” The excuse slips out far too easily, even if sleep is quickly becoming the last thing on his mind with the way his nerves are starting to jump around in his gut. 

“Okay,” she says and he can nearly hear her falter uncertainly, shifting to get up, but thinking better of it, “get some sleep then, okay?” 

“Ja...” He doesn't turn around. “Gute nacht, Jester.” 

He doesn't wait for her to reply, makes his way back to an empty bed roll and a missing goblin. She's curled up in the dog pile, tucked up into the space behind Yasha’s calves with a hand curled around Molly's ankle, the tiefling himself clinging onto the barbarian from behind, tail curled around a slumbering Fjord's forearm nearby. 

With the way Nott's bundled up has him afraid she might be cold. And there's a moment where he contemplates conjuring the tiny hut to cut the slight chill to the air, but he doesn't want to disrupt any of their sleep. And it's not anything dreadfully unbearable. The further south they get the better it seems to be getting anyways. Nott’s sandwiched between two portable heaters anyways. She'll be fine. 

Caleb curls up on the outskirts of them, prompting Frumpkin to stay up. To keep an eye on Jester and an ear on the surroundings. The fey will wake him if something goes terribly wrong. 

Part of him feels guilty for running away again. Not literally this time, but he left to avoid an uncomfortable conversation at the least. Maybe he should have stayed… It's too late now anyways. He already made the choice to walk away again. 

All he can hope for now is some semblance of rest. And that tonight there won't be any nightmares to chase him.

He stares up at the stars, counts them and recites the constellations in his head. The voice in his ear far too close to his mother's-- guiding his hand to point at each one beside hers, reciting the names in a sonorous lilt-- telling each one's tale with the dutifulness of a prophet and he the asker. 

He drifts from one to the other, the canvas sliding in his vision until the stars start to blur and morph, the sheet of darkness turning steadily empty and then-- 

__

_He blinks against an onslaught of spilling sunlight, an arm quickly thrown over his eyes to shield them from the relentless rays. There's a quiet meow and something brushes against his arm. It's not the same pitch as Frumpkin-- the fey tainted with the effects of his true ancestry. Yet, it still sounds… familiar somehow. Sitting up and rubbing at his eyes he blinks  dumbly at the image of the cat before him. It's a mirror image of Frumpkin, but the eyes are different._

_They're far more green._

_The splash of colors around him draws his attention from the bengal pattern that's just a hair off kilter to the sprawl of a garden. A garden that's as familiar to him as the feline staring expectantly up at him._

_When he finally gets to his feet, he's shorter than he expects to be. He looks at his hands and they're smaller, slightly filled out with the cherubic nature of early childhood. Nothing compared to the spindly, skin and bone ones he's grown familiar with. And there are no scars either, just an endless parade march of freckles._

_The cat flicks her tail, tilting her hand before trotting off into the garden. Stumbling on foreign legs he follows, winding and weaving through the maze of life. The cat brushes up against a cluster of hydrangea and Caleb stares at them. The feline settles beside them, blinks up at him, expectant once more._

_He picks one-- and the cat moves on.  It stops at another cluster-- these cornflowers-- and he repeats the process. Another, and he does the same thing again. It does this until he has a handful of varying flora clutched in his grasp-- with the addition of a small ladybug crawling across the petals._

_Follows the cat to the last one, whose name still escapes him, and to a woman kneeled before a patch of deep purpled aconite. Approaching on unsteady legs he finally realizes he's barefoot. That he can feel the spongy give of rich soil beneath his toes-- smell dark earth, and the musk of faint decay and the headiness of toiled loam._

_He holds up his menagerie to her; chubby child-like fingers curled around their stalks, presenting a prismatic array to the garden’s vigilant sentinel. She turns to face him, a smile already on her lips, the sunset haloing auburn hair, cascading in a spill of citrus dapples across her cheeks._

_“Is that all of them?” She asks in a chime of syllables that carries on the zephyr dancing amongst the shifting chorus of pines overhead._

_He nods and she beams, dusting the remnants of her afternoon toil from her hands._

_“They're beautiful,” she says, fingers dancing over the collection of petals and colors in his hands._

_He nods again and she kneels before him, turned to cupping his face in tender, work-calloused palms that still smell of earth and loam. Eyes, as clear blue as his own, stare back at him and he's nearly forgotten that small vein of green in them, or the little dot of amber near the pupils. He's nearly forgotten the littlest details of her. The way she quirks her lips, the small dimple that blemishes her left cheek, the exact way her freckles scatter over the bridge of her nose--_

_“Sometimes the most beautiful things grow from ash.” She swipes her thumb over his tear stained cheek and he can't quite recall when he started crying. “Never forget that.”_

_She smiles wider, turns to look at the garden and he follows her gaze to what he expects to be a house and-- it is two headstones. Inscribed with names he knows more intimately than his own. Familiar sprigs of color jut from the earth at the base of the two slabs of stalwart stone. A softly swaying garden amongst he remains of rubble and charcoal that have slowly decayed into the earth, reclaimed by its creations and used to nourish the new life above it. He reaches out for the small patch of color, fingers brushing the violent lavender petals of the wolfsbane and--_

He wakes up, blinking against the light of dawn and a new morning. There's the chilling bite of the cold on his cheek and he raises his fingers to it. Drawing them away to see the smallest shine of moisture collected on the tips of them. He blinks at the sight, swipes at his eyes, and sits up. Surveys the grounds, ignores the warmth settled beneath his sternum, or the lingering scent of pine-- the feeling of a hand settled on his cheek--

“Caleb?” 

He looks up at Nott, the goblin shifting on her feet before him and a tangle of delicate white flowers clutched in her hands. She glances up from her small collection, lips cracking into a smile, candle-bright eyes more lively than he's seen them in a long time. 

“I found these with Yasha and I thought they might help.” She pauses, poking at the petals with a clawed finger. “Is it okay if I...?”

Caleb nods. He trusts her. He knows she's probably aware of why he doesn't like his hair being touched by now, but he trusts her with this. And if it'll make her feel better to weave a small garden of flowers into his hair then he'll allow her this. 

She's careful about it, delicately braiding a section of his hair beside his left ear with the deft touch of someone who's talents include lock picking and swiping things from unsuspecting victims. It's matched by the clumsiness of someone who's still settling into the fact that one hand has been brought down to three fingers. He can tell she won't let that impede her by any means and it's a moment before she steps back. Seeming to inspect her work before releasing the now braided locks of hair. 

“They'll keep you safe,” she says, as matter of factly as she has done each time they've done this ritual. 

He smiles. “Danke.” 

“Now, come on.” She extends her hand. “Fjord says we still have a bit to go before we reach the gate.” 

He leverages himself to his feet, taking her hand and putting on the farce that she's helped him to his. She knows he's amusing her, but the way she beams, the way her ears perk up and wriggle, all of it speaks of a delight in playing the caretaker to him. The name she mumbled in her drunken sleep still rattling around in his head where it shouldn't. 

And for the longest time-- for nearly the whole time he's known her-- he's tried to be the one who's always there for her, but he can let her be there for him too if it helps...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”
> 
> -Marcus Tullius Cicero
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> have my attempts to include a brief, inaccurate stint of modernish art therapy in a fantasy medieval setting.,, 
> 
>  
> 
> there's still a bit to go before we hit the coast. and another skeleton (Lorenzo) in the closet to address some more,,, old trauma can be thrust to the forefront in the wake of new trauma,,, but we're heading back into exploring that ‘newer’ stuff so strap in. 
> 
> if you're still here and reading this, or just now reading this, I love all y'all and I'm glad you're here <3 prepare for me to ramble at you through the critical role characters using far more words than necessary👌


	24. The Wolf (Part 1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im back,,, and with more weird dream/nightmare imagery that semi-heavily involves the **tags for this work** so keep that in mind.

The Wuyun Gates loom ahead of them, the Righteous Brand swarming around the base of it,  and the flag of the coast's own peacekeepers risen on the wall as well. To Caleb, it all looks like war beginning to choke the ease of travel in and out of the Empire rather than a symbol of safety and security.

“Well...” Fjord turns back to them, Caduceus beside him at the helm of the cart. “We're here.”

“Should we get out and walk?” Beau asks, eyeing the garrison set up outside the gate.

“Probably for the best,” the half-orcs admits, pulling on the reigns to slow the horses.

“Come on, you heard him!” Jester claps her hands, hopping off the back of the cart and out of the illusion. “Let's go people!”

Caleb gets to his feet, wobbling for a moment, and while he's pretty sure he ate this morning,(a soup of nondescript, boiled vegetables, followed by Jester drawing on his wrist again), the sudden light-headed feeling makes him think maybe he hadn't. The new little heart, drawn in  smudging charcoal eyeliner, lets him know, at least, a part of the memory is real. He follows Nott off the back of the cart, stumbling for a moment and righting himself against one of the wheels.

“Caleb?” Jester asks, approaching him, “are you okay?”

“Fine,” he grits out, squinting up at the afternoon sun. It's nearly hot here. The climate having steadily shifted away from the chill of the North and he can feel beads of sweat spidering their way down his spine.

“Did you need some water or something?” Beau asks, gesturing to her face. “Cause you look a bit, uh...”

He doesn't expect the hand brushing his forehead, or for Jester to hold it there. Blinking owlishly as the tiefling seems to concentrate on something for a bit too long.

“You feel a bit cold.” She finally says and Molly snorts behind her.

“You know you run hotter than the average human, right?”

“ _Oh_ , right... well, Beau?” Jester turns to the monk who rolls her eyes, slinging her bo staff over her shoulders as she stalks over.

It's an effort not to flinch back at the rough palm she places on his forehead. A lot less tactful and gentle compared to Jester, the monk purses her lips, tapping her foot and squinting. She withdraws after what feels like too long again, turning to Jester-- and Caleb is starting to get that unique feeling of being talked around and not to.

“He's a bit warm I guess.” She shrugs.

“Oh, _no._ ” Jester gasps, clapping her hands on the sides of her face, and staring up at him. “Do you feel sick?” She gets closer, inspecting him over, circling him, and he resists the urge to retreat back a step-- it's just Jester-- it's just--“You ate this morning, didn't you? You don't have some wound we don't know about, right? Does your stomach hurt? Does _anything_ hur--”

“Jester, dear.”  Molly gently pulls her back. “Don't crowd him."

“Oh! Sorry…”

“I am _fine,_ ” he grits out to a series of skeptical looks.

“Are you sure about tha-”

“Hey, we might have some company soon,” Fjord interrupts from his seat at the front of the cart, Caduceus humming in silent agreement beside him.

Nott scurries up onto the wheel, peering down the small line of carts lined up to get past the gates. Caleb looks down the line himself, narrows his eyes at the sight of the armed guards making their way down the queue.

“Shit,” Nott curses, dropping back down, hurriedly pulling her mask up, before tucking her ears into her hood.

“Well, it's too late to hide all of this I suppose.” Molly gestures to the lot of them and Caleb frowns.

“That shouldn't be a problem. The Menagerie Coast has a lot more…” Jester trails off, glancing to him.

“Diversity?” Beau barks from her new perch on the edge of the cart, elbow resting on Yasha’s shoulder.

The tiefling nods, rocking on her heels, arms clasped behind her back.

“And I don't think they'll recognize where I'm from...even if they're leery of… ah, of... Xhorhas,” Yasha says quietly, pulling nervously at one of the new braids in her still shortened hair.

“So... we'll be fine then?” Molly asks, leaning against the cart, arms crossed.

Caleb looks to Nott ,who's sidled up beside him, holding her hand (the one with the missing finger, rebandaged and not an inch of green showing) out for his.  A variation of _Mother's Love_ then.

“We'll find out soon enough...” Fjord mutters, the heavy footfall and shift of plate-mail betraying the arrival of the guard. “How can I help you all this fine, afternoon?”

It's almost eerie how easily Fjord slips on that mask of pleasantry, his drawl flattening with the presence of a charm he doesn't usually exhibit. The guards are silent for a moment. There's only two of them and they both take their time glancing over the group, the one on the left pausing on Nott, and Caleb can feel the goblin shift closer to his leg.

“Are you all traveling for trade?” The right guard asks, nodding towards the cart that holds the illusion of still being full.

“We plan to buy goods for trade, yes sir.” Fjord says with a polite nod.

The guard on the left narrows his eyes. “Cart looks full to me.”

“An illusion to ward off bandits from thinking it's more precious cargo,” Caduceus says with a lazy smile and a shrug. “Just a safety measure, you can check it out if you'd like.”

The skeptical guard sniffs, nodding, and sends a look to the other, waving him forward. The other man curses, grumbling as he moves to obey, brushing far too close for comfort. And Caleb can't hide the retreat he makes, free hand reaching up to grab at the knit scarf around his neck, thumb running over the textured weave of it. Nott squeezes his other hand even tighter, and he glances down to see her all but pressed against his leg now, her head bowed and hidden under the hood.

“Is she your kid?” The guard asks, and Caleb freezes when he realizes the man is addressing him now.

He looks over at the other guard still peering into the cart,  testing out the illusion by backing in and out of it.

“Ja,” he ventures cautiously, turning his attention back to the one questioning him. “Ja, she is.”

The guard's eyes widen a fraction and Caleb wants to hunch at the scrutiny, but he keeps his back rigid, the fuzzy buzz of static in his skull somehow worsening. He just needs to keep the attention on himself--

“That accent Zemnian?”

Somehow, it's too hot and cold all at once, and he would rather do anything besides stand here and answer this man's questions while Nott practically cowers against him. Even if it's mostly an act, it feels a bit too real-- too close for comfort--  

“....ja it… it is...”

“Hey,” Beau barks from her perch on the cart, “this an interrogation or an inspection?”

“Beau,” Fjord reprimands her, more for show than anything, before turning to the guard in question, “Sorry, we've just been on the road a bit too long. She's starting to lose her manners.”

“No, no, it's fine.” The man shrugs with a smile that's anything but friendly. “I'm just being nosy.”

“It seems to check out,” the other guard drawls as he returns.

“Should we get Dualla to check it out still?”

“Naw, she's busy with that one caravan.”

“Right.” The more skeptical guard nods. “Well then, I think you all are good to go, but--” The guard looks right at Nott, and Caleb can feel his heart leap into his throat. “Just know, the inspection coming back into the Empire will be much more thorough.”

“Thank you kindly, sir.” Fjord nods and gives them a parting salute, not seeming to have noticed. “Have a good day.”  

“You too.” The amiable guard waves as he walks by, already moving on to the next cart in line.

The other one lingers, staring between him and Nott, eyes narrowed. Before, finally passing by. Nearly shoulder checking him as he goes, and Caleb shuffles away, head bowed.

“What an asshole.” Beau mutters under her breath at his retreat and Molly muffles a laugh behind a fist.

“You know, I was sure he would be more distracted by _this_ ,” Molly gestures to himself in general and Jester giggles, “But he seemed mighty interested in you.”

“I'm used to it.” Nott grumbles under her breath, dropping Caleb’s hand, and the lack of that anchor right now is an immeasurable loss.

“We still haven't solved what's wrong with Caleb you know,” Jester stage whispers to Molly and Caleb sighs.

“I'm fine, Jeste--”

“Oh, no,”Jester gasps, “he's using contractions, he's dying-- Caduceus!” She bounds back up into the cart, pointing back to him. “Heal him!”

The firbolg seems to be thoroughly absorbed in a conversation with Fjord and only spares Jester a confused smile and a nod.

“I use them when I talk all the time.” Caleb attests, clambering his way back into the cart as well, collapsing against the side with a sigh.

“Do you?” Molly asks, easily hoisting himself up behind him.

“ _Ja.”_

“Mhm,” Molly hums skeptically, sly grin canting his lips.

“You're all dumb,” Beau adds, easily hopping up into the cart again, “you know he's probably just sweltering under that coat and dehydrated right?”

“Wow, I didn't know Beau was the cleric of the party,” Nott says, settling down beside him, fingers fumbling at the lid of her flask..  

“Hey!” Jester protests, crossing her arms.

“To be fair, she's probably done as much healing as you have in combat,” Molly teases, sitting cross-legged across from him.

“No! I heal all the time!” The tiefling pouts, throwing her hands up. “I heal _so much_ you guys!”

Caleb shakes his head-- it's far too loud in this cart and his head is pounding.

“You think I'm a good cleric, right Caleb?” Jester turns to him, eyes wide and pleading.

“The best,” he agrees, clipped and succinct, hoping it will get all of them to be quiet for a bit.

“See?”

“You're a fantastic cleric, dear,” Molly affirms, and Caleb misses the rest of what the tiefling says then Beau steps into his line of sight.

The monk plunks herself down on the cart, holding out a waterskin to him. “You might want to lose the jacket for a bit.”

“Ja…” He accepts the offered water, wriggling out of the coat and the instant chill sends him shivering.

“I wasn't uh, really paying attention, but you did eat this morning, right?” She asks, squinting at him.

“I think so…” he mutters, holding the water skin up to his lips. The first drop of water on his tongue is a damn breaking, and he didn't realize how parched he was until now.

“Damn, fuck, slow down, man. You'll get the hiccups and then we'll all have to listen to that for the next half hour.”

“Sorry.”

“Don't apologize.”

“Sor-”

She narrows her eyes at him and he bites back the reflexive word. He nearly finishes off the small skin's supply before passing it back to her. The monk looks him over, shoots a glance to Nott, and stands, heading back towards Yasha at the head of the cart; her footing sure and even despite the resumed bump of it.

Caleb settles back against the cart's side, pooling the shed coat in his lap, whilst Frumpkin bumps up against his thigh and paws at the lump of fabric and fur taking up his usual perch. The water took the edge off of the uncomfortable sensation, but he still feels drawn thin, heart racing in his chest, and palms sticky with sweat. There's a sense of impending ruin he can't explain in so many words. It's curled up right in his stomach and he's not sure when it will leave.

He tries to focus on Jester and Molly, the two turned to looking at tarot cards together and talking animatedly. Focus on the _fwip_ of cards being shuffled, and not the way that the guard had looked at Nott, that they were inches from something bad, that they could have been locked up again-- that they still could be. He can't focus on the fact that he's left the Empire, that's he's outside its reach for once in his life-- because it's still buried there, written in every scar on his skin. That man had looked at him, at Nott, and back to him--- and he had seen dirt, _scum_. Caleb knows what someone's eyes look like when they see something beneath them-- he's nearly memorized it and--

“We might have company.” Caduceus says from the front of the cart and Caleb hones in on the firbolg. The man raises his hand, clutching the staff that hisses and clicks with insects, and it's all a bit of a blur after that--

He snaps back to himself, standing in the gravel path of the ravine road, hand outstretched in front of him, the mesquite smell of fire heavy in the air. There's the tang of burned flesh, the mountain pass still and silent besides the chitter of insects devouring the ettin where it sloughs into a heap of useless meat. The other is some odd, hundred feet off, burned to nothing amongst the rocks. There's bat guano still stuck to his fingers, the smell sickly sweet and nearly overwhelming amongst the new, quiet emptiness.

“Caleb?”

He hunches, fingers spanning over the sharp stabbing in his side, each new inhale like dragging a knife over his ribs. There's hurried footsteps, a small cloaked figure stopping in front of him, reaching for his outstretched hand where it's fallen. Fingers squeeze around his, grounding him, and he looks down to candle-bright eyes and Nott smiling up at him.

“You didn't go away that time,” she says after a moment, “well...not like you've done before.”

_“Was?”_

“You turned away one of ‘em, after it tried to smash the cart, and it just ran,” she snaps her fingers, “Like that from us.” Nott looks nearly giddy now, excited, her ears wiggling the way they do when she's said she's proud of him. “Caleb, you even hopped off the cart to get in range to slow that one for Beauregard.” Nott points to the one being slowly turned to mulch and then points at the lazy strings of smoke in the distance. “And you took him out with fire and you didn't go away like you did the last time.”

He remembers some of it. Knowing he needed to act-- do something, anything-- distract them-- weaken them for the others-- Clambering off the cart to the protesting shouts of the others still on it. Smearing molasses over his fingers, dragging the ettin to a crawl with a closed fist. The club smashing into his side, being bowled off his feet and skidding to a halt in the gravel. Staggering back up, stone grit into his skin, blood sliding down from his temple, hot and sticky on the side of his face. The others coming in with their own arsenals, the remaining ettin turning tail and fleeing. Recalls pulling the components from the pouch at his side, removing the guano from the inner pocket of his coat, smearing them together between his palms, and pointing at the ettin as it ran; pinky and ring finger curled in before he--

“It worked,” he breathes, free hand reflexively grabbing for the book strapped under his arm.

Evocation always used to be his speciality, but he had never reached the point of using that one under Ikithon. Read about it, studied it, been on the cusp of mastering it. But here-- _here_ it is his own studies that have gotten him to this point. There is the welling sensation, one that he dares call pride, nestled amongst the usual flotsam sunk beneath his ribs.

“They kept you safe, you know.” She points up to her own hair and his fingers follow to the braid still in his, the flowers a bit withered but clinging to their remnants of life.

And he's heard that before, maybe from his mother, or maybe from a book. “It is a halfling tradition is it not?”

Nott nods, wringing her hands. “It is.”

“Is it something you picked up from Yeza?”

She shakes her head.

“Nott?”

She shrugs. “I've just… I've always done it.”

Caleb frowns, doing the quick calculation in his head. “But…” Then that would mean--

“Hey, Nott!” Jester shouts from behind them, heading for the charred ettin. “Come help me search this guy for anything valuable!”

“I'll tell you soon,” Nott quickly affirms, patting the back of his hand before releasing him, “I promise.”

“Okay...”

Nott nods, shuffling in place a moment before hurrying off. He watches her flee, that annoyingly analytical part of his head quickly rifling through every little instance she's ever shared with him, inspecting them for discrepancies and scraps of evidence. It doesn't… something doesn't add up. Nott… not--

He shakes the thought from his head. She promised she would tell him eventually. He shouldn't pry. Her secrets are hers. Her pain is hers as well-- and if she wants to share it with him, then fine, if not-- if _not_ … then that's her choice.

Trudging, near limping, back to the cart he manages to pull himself up part way, but the pain in his side flares and his foot slips, hands scrabbling to right himself to no avail. He doesn't expect arms to catch him around the torso and hoist him up the entire way. They maneuver him so he's propped up on the side of the cart and he looks up at Yasha as she kneels in front of him.

“Does it hurt?” She asks, pointing to his side.

“It is… manageable.”

She levels him with a knowing look, glancing to the others already returned to the cart. Caduceus and Molly are discussing something while Fjord inspects the minor damage to the cart. Jester, Nott and Beau are still looting and taking care of the bodies.

She sets a heavy mit on his shoulder. And where he might usually shy from it, the presence is oddly grounding. “Let Caduceus or Jester look at it.”

“Maybe…”

“Please,” she squeezes his shoulder and he nods, clenching his jaw, fingers curling around his side.

Yasha lingers for a moment and stands, turning to help Beau and the others, returned from their rummaging, into the cart. He still doesn't ask either cleric to take a look at it and he can nearly feel Yasha’s silent dissapointment as everyone settles in again and the cart resumes its trek.

The pain grounds him here, doesn't let his mind drift or scatter. He stays silent in his corner of the cart. Breathes shallowly and quickly, sharp inhales through his nose, winces when his side expands too far.

They stop for camp what is maybe an hour, probably more, later.  And he's fine, the pain dull and far away-- until he maneuvers his way off the cart and he goes stumbling. Hands catch him again, and he pulls out of their reach the second he knows he won't go face planting. Looks up to see Molly, left with his arms still held up like he's holding someone. The tiefling eyes him up and down, honing in on where Caleb's curled his hand around his side, as if it'll hold the constant feeling of a knife in his ribs at bay.

“You took a pretty nasty hit out there, Caleb.” The tiefling reaches for him and he takes a step back. “Maybe you should get Jester or Clay to--”

“No. I am fine.”

“Don't be a stubborn ass.”

Caleb blanches.

“You're being an idiot and if I have to be the one to call you out on it, I will.” Molly leans away, cupping a hand over his mouth and shouting, “Jester!”

The tiefling in question perks up from where she's rummaging through her haversack, abandoning it and bounding over in the excited hop-skip she always seems to have. Before finally stopping in front of Molly and tilting her head like a particularly curious dog. “Hm?”

“Our resident wizard is hiding his wounds.”

Jester puts her hands on her hips, sternly glaring up at him. “That's a _stupid_ thing to do, Cay-leb” She touches his shoulder and the injury vanishes with the tingle of evergreen and mint in the back of his throat. “There, now isn't that better than pretending you're not hurt?”

“Ja...”

She bops him on the nose. “Don't be stupid again, okay?” And she flounces off before he can even form a coherent reply.

Molly pats him on the shoulder, drawing his attention back to him when the tiefling's hand lingers. “You help us, we help you. Remember that, Caleb.”

Caleb nods, dropping his gaze to focus on the periapt resting over Molly's sternum.

“Good,” Molly squeezes his shoulder, before turning towards where the others are, glancing back at him for a moment.  “Now come along, dinner awaits.”

He follows on the tiefling's heels, skin still warm from Jester's healing magic, and where Molly's fingers had lingered.

 

 

 

\------

 

 

 

Dinner had been an odd affair.

He spent most of the evening’s meal watching Jester try and toss grapes into Beau's mouth. The tiefling cajoling him into joining in, and roping in all the others as well, until somehow, it became a contest. An odd one, and one he had lost, but a fun affair while it lasted. Even if his own laughter wasn't quite as loud, as uproarious or encompassing as Molly's, or Jester's-- or even Beau's when Yasha managed to ping her straight in the eye. It had still felt good to laugh. Genuinely and wholly.

It's been a while since he's had to work to smother a smile from titling his lips up, to keep his face from betraying his amusement. And he hadn't missed the way all the others caught onto it the moment it happened. Unsurprisingly, Jester most of all. She had tried to make him laugh again after the first instance she heard it, the blue tiefling going out of her way to do all manners of small tricks and crude jokes,  the others joining in with her hijinks once they caught onto what she was doing. And it had been hard not to break character a second time, but at that point it was more of a game than an inability not to.

Caduceus had called the revelry off eventually, realizing Caleb had spent more time watching the others than on his meal. And it had been a quiet, but amiable affair after that.

Now, it's in the final margins of dusk. The last bits of light still staining the horizon line in violets and purples that creep into a wash of indigo and speckled starlight. The fire is burning low, mostly puttered out, no one tending to it as the rest have cordoned off to their own matters as the evening draws to a quiet close.

He's chosen to stick closer to the dying fire as he inspects the smooth stone in his palm, notes opened and balanced on his knees. It should be done now. It's only a matter of testing it out when the time comes. Slipping it into the pocket of his coat (the left one, right over his chest if he pulls it closed) he turns back to the pages of his spell book.

Flips his way to the end, to pages made of less sturdy parchment and lower quality make. There's small doodles of constellations, of flowers, of small things he's seen, among other, more random notes that don't quite need to stain the nicer pages reserved for spellcraft and research. He's also tied down the small lists the others made, a few nights ago now, to the inside of the back cover. The collection more protected by the sturdier cover of the tome rather than left vulnerable in one of his pockets.

He hasn't read them over since he got them. The handwriting questionable on some, barely legible on others, but he doesn't want to read them all just yet. Closing the tome and slipping it back into its holster under his arm he settles back, knees drawn to his chest, arms folded atop them, chin resting on his forearms as he stares at the smoldering embers. Watches the last trail of cinders twirl their way up and turn to ash, keeps his gaze up their with the stars, and traces over them. Recites their names in his head and wonders how the sky can still look exactly the same, but still so different as to be nearly foreign.

There's footsteps and he looks over to see Jester, her sketchbook clutched to her chest. She settles down beside him, fingers curled nervously around the book that she settles on her thighs. It's a moment before she says anything, where he keeps his attention on the stars above and waits.

“Did you want to try drawing again, Caleb?”

He figured she would come back to him about it eventually. That it wasn't just a one time thing, that he has more to work through and she, and maybe even the others, are all too aware of it. The price of sharing his grief, he supposes.

“Ja.” He shifts, crossing his legs in front of him and turning to face her. “Sure.”

She rummages for the ink and pulls out a familiar quill, passing it over, the same oil-slick shine of the raven's feather shining oddly in the dim firelight.

“Did you want to try something specific this time?” she asks, passing over the sketchbook, already flipped to a crisp, pristine page.

He shrugs, fiddling with the quill, running his fingers along the edge of it, watching the tiny strands that make up the feather shift. The others are bedding down nearby now, Beau reading something aloud to the others, and by the sound of it, it _must_ be Tusk Love. Fjord's nearly pained groan, Caduceus’ confused questioning, matched by Molly's excited conjectures, and Yasha’s usual silence makes him think Beau's endeavor is going quite well indeed.

“Did you want to try and…”Jester pauses, and it's entirely uncharacteristic enough it has him nervous. “Did you want try and think about the thing?” Jester finally asks and Caleb narrows his eyes, unsure what she means until she continues. “The uh, the...Lorenzo thing?”

And gods, how pathetic it is to flinch at a ghost’s name?

He doesn't _want_ to. He never wants to. But he does-- _all the time_ \-- even when he's not. Even when he isn't thinking about him. It's _impossible_ not to. Even when he thinks it's something else, it's just him and that, and all of it, buried under the surface. He shrugs, but the way his fingers have turned to trembling around the quill she handed him, he's not sure the nonchalance of the action fits the whole.

“Okay… okay, you don't have to, you know?” Jester starts, reaching for the sketchbook. “We don't have to do this tonight if you don't want to, Caleb.” He pulls it away from her hand, and she falls back, shoulder falling. “I won't force you to...”

He shakes his head, fingers tightening around the sketchbook. If he avoids it forever, isn't that the same as letting him win? And he uses win like it's some game-- like he agreed to participate in it at all. He really wishes it was just a game, then he could tap out, let someone else tag in for him. Swap out of this body for a new one-- for a new, clean slate. One that hasn't been carved into so many times he's not even sure what it looked like before.

Jester pushes the ink vial closer and waits, pulling her knees to her chest, chin resting atop them and tail curling over her ankles. “I can step away while you work…I don't even have to see it. And you can tear it up when you're done...”

“... it's fine.” He mutters, cutting her off-- and it's weak, withered.

He doesn't want to be alone. But he also doesn't want to pick this apart while she's watching. He doesn't want to pick at it at all.

The blank page glares at him and he's not even sure where to start with this. He glances back up to her and he can see she's as put off, as unnerved, as he is. She smiles encouragingly, but it falters and falls flat. The quill nearly moves on its own as he drags it across the surface and avoids her eyes, penning a nonsensical dash across the surface before frowning at it. There's an image in his head and he latches onto it, and latches onto the safer version of this story. The fable and the dreams. If he can't talk about the reality yet, maybe the nightmares are safer...

“I have… I have dreams sometimes.” He admits after a moment, laying down a horizon line and then the outlines of trees from the dashes he's already made.

“Oh.” She tilts her head. “What are they like?

“Dark.” He scribbles the sky into existence, bleeding it ebony with midnight colored ink, above the treeline and between the boughs. “It's always dark in them. sometimes it isn't… but _he's_ there. Others sometimes… and you've all been there too…” He moves to the river bank, draws small circles to indicate pebbles, ripples on the water to show it's moving; fast and swift, untameable. “And, ah…ev-- even when I'm not dreaming there's this.” He rubs his sternum. “A constant feeling…”

“What does it feel like?”

“Like he's always there,” he admits, “like I'm being chased by something and I don't want to turn around and face it. That if I don't keep running… that I _have_ to keep running.”

“Like fear?”  

“Maybe… but it's… its not the same as that. It's always there. Fear is… Fear is an _instant._ This feels infinite. It...lingers.” He draws plants along the shore, reeds and flowers; sickly and ill amongst the stone. “Sometimes, it's like a trickle of water in the back of my head...and other times it's like… like a river, and I'm drowning in it.” He glances up to her for a moment before returning to the drawing. “And it's hard to think…”

“Has anything helped you… when that happens?”

He pauses long enough to show her his arms and her pursed lips and pinched eyes are enough of a response in itself.

“Oh,” she starts, trailing off, “well… anything besides that?”

“Focusing on something…”

She perks up. “Like petting Frumpkin?”

“Ja...” Among other methods he abandoned, and plans to _keep_ abandoned.

“Well it's good you have him back then.” She smiles, nodding, and he's glad she can at least point out the positive in this.

He turns back to his drawing, hand idly inking the page, nearly mindlessly now, as he populates the dark forest he's drawn.

“Wolves?” she asks once he's drawn them out enough, once she can see what he's making here.

He nods.

She taps her finger on the small form ahead of them, a nearly disfigured fawn, with sloping ears and frightened eyes. He's not the best artist, but it gets the point across.

“And is that you?”

“Ja...”  He trails off, fingers tightening around the quill, shoulders tensing at the phantom crawl of hot breath on his ear, and the non-existent weight of a metal collar around his neck.

“Caleb?”

“Jester, I don't know how to… how to--” He's not even sure what he's trying to say or what he's _supposed_ to say here. “Sometimes...I feel like I haven't left. That he's still here. That I do not own myself sometimes. It does not-- none of it makes sense, but I--”

The end of the quill buckles and he stares at the ink blotting out the image where it had collected at the tip. Jester draws his hand away, removes his death grip on it and closes the sketchbook, setting it off to the side. And Caleb isn't sure when his breath started speeding up or why his chest hurts at all, but there's a tattling in his ears, like chains, like his friends screams, like his own--

“He doesn't own you,” she starts, letting him retreat back towards his scarf where he twists his hand into the safety of knitted fabric.”They don't own you. Your voice is yours, your body is yours, you are _you_ , Caleb. They can't take that from you.”

He shakes his head, drawing back from her and her words.

“Even if they tried-- even if you think they have--- they haven't, Caleb.” Her face crumples, eyes brimming with her own collection of tears, and the sight of them makes him feel horrible, terrible, awful even-- he's hurt them all enough.“They haven't and they never will.”

“Don't cry,” he mutters, trying to wipe away the evidence of his own.

“Shut up,” Jester sniffs, swiping at her eyes, and frowning, but it lacks any venom behind it, “you started it.”

He shakes his head, knowing full well he did.

“You totally did, Caleb. Don't be a stubborn idiot.”

He laughs, a watery, sardonic one, but one that he latches onto, breath beginning to even out and the tension in his gut coiling back down to something manageable. It's just a drawing afterall, and one that he made with his own hands. Yet, even the thought of articulating it fully, of pulling back the fable of monsters in the woods chasing a helpless fawn to reveal the true story, terrifies him somehow.

He scrubs at his eyes and sighs heavily, carding a shaky hand through his hair and trying to catch up with the beat under his sternum. Composing himself feels like more of a task than it should. “Unfortunately, I think being a ‘stubborn idiot’ is a large part of being Caleb Widogast.”

“Well, maybe just stick to books and cats then. Stubborn idiot isn't a very good look on you, I would know.”

“Ja… maybe.”

She sighs after a moment, a small huff of air, nearly defeat, but maybe a bit of relief, as she collects the drawing supplies and shoves them back into the haversack.

“We'll try again some other time, okay?” She stands, slinging the bag over her shoulder. “Try and get some sleep, Caleb.”

“Okay...”

She nods, lips pressed into a determined line as she wanders off, presumably towards the others he can still hear chattering away. Part of him wonders how much they heard, another part is too wrung out to really care. Frumpkin paws at his thigh and he scoops the cat up with ink stained fingers, bundles the familiar close to his chest and sits there for a moment.

_‘They don't own you.’_

Maybe she's right. But sometimes, he doesn't know how to be free or what to do with the concept of freedom. Of choice. He knows what he needs to do and he will do it, but it's still a goal, a purpose he's shackled himself to, and he can't imagine what he would do if he didn't have it. Chains and cages have dictated his life far more than naught. He spent eleven years in a cage. Before that maybe his cage was Trent, maybe it was the Empire’s loyalty. And then, suddenly, it was slavers caging him. He always keeps coming back to them somehow. It's hard to tell if he's left one sometimes. The bars all look the same...

Frumpkin's muffled meow draws his attention and he realizes he's been sitting and staring at the same point in the grass for far longer than could be considered sane. There's a lot clattering around in his head and it's hard to latch onto one thought and stay focused on it. Oddly like floating, detached from his own worldly tether, and he knows he should probably find something to reground himself with.

There's a series of lists in his spellbook that they all made for him, but he doesn't think he deserves to look at them. He doesn't deserve the comfort inked into the pages-- not yet and not tonight.

So he curls up, Frumpkin occupying the space under his arm, and the warmth of the fey feels distant and artificial. Everything from the rasp of clothes on his skin to the sounds of the others breathing around him-- is removed and far away.

It's a difficult time trying to fall asleep, not when he can't stop thinking. It takes him running through every known constellation he's memorized to finally even out his breathing, to let his eyes slip closed-- to hear his mother's voice in his ear, reciting the pattern of the stars to him as he drifts off to sleep...

 

 

\-----

 

 

_He doesn't remember why-- but he's running._

_And not towards something, but away. Heart slamming in his ears, the steel trap click of teeth at his heels spurring him further into the shadowed arms of the forest, moonlight sliding between the limbs like so many dead and rattling fingers laced overhead. There's the calling bray of a beast-- a wolf in the shifting mist-- that sends him gasping and panting, stumbling on coltish legs and bare feet._

_The throes of decayed leaves crunching underfoot are a constant crash in his ears, breath leaving him in puffing trails of condensed air, the shadows swimming and sliding oddly around him-- like water-- like molasses-- thick and sticky against his skin. Flecks of violent gold dart amongst the gnarled tree trunks dressed up in their curtainous fog._

_The heavy, panting breaths of predators on the hunt surround him, their footfalls thunderous, their growls and barks tearing down his spine. Joined by the sticky waft of air breathed against him, the resounding click--click-- click of never sated teeth centimeters from quivering flesh as they snap at his ankles._

_There's a river, a roaring rushing thing, he can hear it ahead of him. He just needs to-- if he can just make it across-- even if he's swept away by the current-- even if he doesn't reach that other shore--_

_The tumble of white-capped water over jutting rocks is deafening now, a raging, turbulent thing. A vein of the forest, and it's dark waters an invitation compared to the predators bearing down on him. He would rather be dashed against the rocks, dragged under, and drowned below the ebony froth than face gleaming teeth and dark, hungry eyes._

_Freedom is right there-- damp, moss-slicked pebbles slide under his feet, between his toes-- It's right there-- one more step--_

_Something slams into him from behind and he crashes into the bank with the scatter of stones and a yelping cry._

_“Found you.” The wolf breathes in his ear, it's lips pulling into a grin along the shell of his ear._

_He claws at the sifting shore, reaches for the water until his shoulder aches, fingers barely brushing the inky liquid-- salvation inches away. A hulking mit pins his wrist to the river bank, drags it away from the water, and his fingers leave furrowed valleys in their wake._

_“Were you trying to get to them?” It asks, bearing down on him, trapping him beneath its heaving, humid breath-- sickly and hot against the back of his neck._

_“Did you think it would be that easy?” Fingers tangle in his hair and pull his head back._

_He can just barely see across the turbulent water now. See the little lights flickering on the opposite shore out of the corner of his eye. He reaches for them again and the hand catches his attempt, smothers it into the gravel, grinds his arm down into jagged stone until his skin weeps._

_“Did you think that you could just keep running-- that I wouldn't catch you?” It breathes across his cheek, lips peeled back, revealing sharp teeth and glinting gold that he can see reflected in the lapping ebony water. “It's been a while hasn't it?” The fingers pinning his wrist turn to trail up his arm and he thrashes. He reaches for the water again, wishes it would swallow him as the hand splays over his side and squeezes, encompassing the whole, collapsible cage of his ribs. The other wrenches his head back even further, fully exposing his throat to those wanting wolves waiting on the outskirts of this scene._

_“You told them some of it, didn't you?” The hand slips its way under the thin layer of his shirt, nails dragging down the stair-steps of his ribs._

_“What about all of them?” The fingers tangled in his hair wrench his gaze over to the forest. “Did you tell them about those ones too?”_

_The other wolves circle in the dark, their fingers curled and eager, eyes glowing and hungry, teeth bared. A low panicked whine works its way out of him when one of them wanders closer-- _too close_ \-- its face lost to a haze he can't swipe away from the memory.  He tries to scramble away, squirm out from under the wolf pinning him-- the original one-- the leader of this pack--_

_“Ah, ah--” It croons in his ear, pressing its fingers into his shoulder blade, nails dragging into flesh. “Stay.”_

_**“Caleb...”** _

_He blinks, eyes rolling to that opposite shore, across an expanse of tumbling river he hasn't overcome. Those lights are still there, dancing and shifting-- wavering like torchlight. He knows if he reached them that the wolves couldn't chase him into the fire--_

_“They can't help you.”  Teeth graze along the back of his neck, sharp and poised, dragging over his skin-- a threat and a promise, like strings of spit sliding from a beast's jowls._

_**“Caleb...”** _

_The other voice calls to him still, but he can't find it-- He bucks, and writhes, and then there's nothing. Face grit into slick stone, the wolf pushing his head down, smothering him amongst the dirt and rock._

_“You'll never reach them,” it chuckles in a waft of carrion slicked breath along his shoulder blade._

_He gasps, coming up for air when the palm finally leaves its perch on his skull. The momentary relief turns sour with the fingers grasping and pulling at the neckline of his shirt. The first ripping tear is a landslide in his ears that ricochets its way into his chest and climbs up his throat. He scrabbles at the sifting earth beneath him, tries to halt the hands sundering the fabric, his nails biting into leathery flesh and tearing, but they don't budge. They don't stop, and there's a bleating cry bunched at the back of his throat for the futility of it all._

_**“Caleb...”** _

_He searches for that other voice again, his name whispered amongst the noises he'd rather forget-- rather have never heard, but all he can see are the other wolves, crouched around this unfolding scene. And he knows the eyes on that one, that nose on another, that slashing scar across that forgotten mouth-- Faces he can't connect so wholly in the waking world, but he knows them here. And they won't save him--_

_“There is no shore for things like you to swim to.”_

_He heaves, animal fear slicking his lips with acrid bile, and his chest, bare and raw, drags across the biting teeth beneath him as he yanks himself towards the water. He wants the emptiness of it in his lungs, the slip of the dark into every part of him-- and he doesn't want this, anything but-- Hands catch his ankles, pull him back and under the fetid, billows-breath of the wolf that settles heavy and hot on the back of his thighs. It tears at the remains of his clothing, tugging them down, ripping them to shreds under its teeth and nails. The other wolves pull at his boots, his feet and ankles-- at his hands and arms-- bandages unraveling from him into innocuous pools of fabric. Settled, lifeless and slipping, like steaming viscera pulled from a deer’s gut, but colorless and cold.  And it isn't the intestinal fabric the wolves want to devour here-- but him._

_“There is no safety.”_

_There's a moment where the hands retreat, when he can hear the wolf stand and the others back off. And he tries to crawl for the water again, submerges himself up to his torso-- inhales as much of the inky black as he can, and it rips down his lungs in a cold shock. Like so many fingernails dragging along the soft flesh of his throat-- an invasion he welcomes with the firm certainty of an end._

_Fingers catch around his ankle and he's pulled, gagging and shivering from the numbness. Shaking and sputtering-- kicking at the figure that pulls him from his last chance at freedom. Another hand catches his flailing limb, pins it down, and another joins it-- and another-- the other wolves joining in, wrenching him back onto his front. They press his face into the shore, tug mercilessly at him until he's spread eagle on the rocks. He's left with his sides heaving, muscles quivering, and the taste of acid and vile water thick on his tongue. A set of pleas desperate and wanting behind bared teeth, but he can't find his voice to try them--_

_“There is no haven.”_

_Lorenzo-- no-- the man-- no-- the wolf-- he-- it kneels, settling heavy and unavoidable-- unmistakable between his legs. Leans over him, and the brush of leather armor, chains, and hooks are like drops of fire against his back. He pulls at the vices trapping his limbs and they don't budge. Grinds his forehead against the rocks below, twists to try and see what the wolf is doing, but he's stopped, freezing-- going rigid when a hand curls under the curve of his hip._

_“No island I cannot reach you on.”_

_Suddenly, the other isn't clothed either, and he struggles harder, tries to rip at the hands holding him down until his shoulders burn, joints clicking and popping. Turns to bite at his own arm, teeth clamping shut on nothing, feral and desperate under the nails digging into the tender flesh of his pelvis. Trapped-- again, not again, please--  beneath the fingers exploring the curving dip of his spine and trailing down--_

_“No forest you can hide in.”_

_It's happening again. It's all-- He can't-- There's heat pressed along his back, impossibly more fingers tangled in his hair and wrenching-- a hand splayed over his chest, smoothing down his heaving ribs and ripping ragged nails into him._

_“No amount of dirt and starvation that you can ever erase me with.”_

_Teeth bury into his shoulder, splitting him open alongside the agony that rips up his spine and chokes him. An aborted cry dies on his lips, bile-- like sickening, ebony water, dribbles past his parted lips, turning crimson where it pools amongst the stones. And there's only the bed beneath him-- only the beast above him--_

_“You are nothing.”_

_Fingers close around his throat, melting into a steel band that saps the warmth from his skin. He goes limp; and bloodied fingers, with their torn back nails, abort their scrabbling flight amongst satin stones._

_“I own you.”_

_All he knows is the rush of the water like blood in his ears, the huff of breath atop him-- the sharp drag of nails in his skin, and the wolf inside hi--_

_**“Caleb!”** _

_His head cracks to the side, jarring against the rocks and--_

\--he scrambles up, batting at the hands holding him down, twists and kicks out at the figure kneeled over him-- doesn't stop to think about how it's colors are all wrong. That it doesn't smell like cloying leather and rot--

“Hey, hey, you're okay,” the figure soothes, holding its hands out, “It's okay...”

Caleb shakes his head, shuffles back from them and swipes at his legs, at his arms, at his neck, until he's sure there aren't any hands on him. It takes a long moment of blinking and shivering-- staring at a point in the grass and trying to figure out where the river went-- before he realizes none of this holds the same suspended quality a dream does.

There's the sound of shifting, the sift of grass and Caleb looks up to the figure crouching in front of him again.  Chest still heaving, wide eyed, arms curled close to his chest, and the reek of iron sticky in the air. It's Caduceus. It's just Caduceus--

“Sorry about that.” Caduceus points to his own cheek and Caleb reflexively reaches up to his own, rubbing at where it still smarts. “I was gonna let it run its course, but you…” The firbolg gestures to his own forearms and Caleb glances down.

He's torn through the bandages. Clawed his way right down to his skin. Torn open every crevice and furrow that had healed over. There's a knot lodged in the base of his throat, choking and suffocating-- it feels like failure. Like starting from square one when he thought he'd made some kind of progress. Every little effort tossed out the window, in an instant, with the flinch that racks through him when Caduceus rises to his feet without warning.

The firbolg wanders off, quickly returning with an empty wooden bowl and a cloth. A familiar scene-- in the room of an inn in Zadash when he carved a part of himself away that was too owned, too claimed by that place, by the phantom in his head. Water, clear and crisp, untainted-- conjured with the divinity of a god-- appears in the bowl and Caleb's afraid to let it touch his skin.

He startles back at the first brush of the firbolg's hand against his arm. Shakes his head, eyes screwed shut, and heart leaping under his ribs. There's a moment, a quiet pause for him to gather his breath in, where Caduceus waits, with his hand extended and no indication that he'll move any closer. It's a long halting stretch of time before Caleb passes over his arm, warily eyeing the firbolg, shifting as far away from him as he can-- eyes flicking over him for the moment gentle touches might turn to something else.

Caduceus starts to unwrap the remainders of the bandages for him and he watches them unravel.  Still trembling from the remains of the dream, limbs weak and coltish-- pliable. The desire to tear at his skin, to peel back every layer until there's only a new version of him left-- until there's some existence of his where he's never been touched-- sits heavy at the tips of his fingers. The beads of crimson welling from the tears send a curl of nausea sparking up his throat and he grits his teeth against it

Caduceus finishes unwinding the tattered and stained cloth from his arms, lingers on the patch of skin where the brand used to be on the back of his hand, before setting the

bandages aside. Caleb knows there's one mirrored on the firbolg’s shoulder blade. He wonders if Caduceus wants to get rid of it as badly as Caleb needed to. A part of him thinks about asking-- and reconsiders.

“You know...everything happens for a reason, Mister Caleb,” Caduceus says, “Everything has a purpose.” The firbolg sighs, dipping the clean cloth into the water. “We can learn from our pasts and move forward.”

He's sure Caduceus thinks he was dreaming about fire. That his sleep-drunk pleas went mistaken as desperate ‘no' s’ for an inferno, and not for the teeth of a wolf buried in his skin.

_Because why would he cry wolf, when he knows the wolf is dead?_

And Caleb knows he's dead, but he's come crawling back to the forefront. Like so many bad tastes and smells that won't leave him alone if he thinks about them too much. Like bad colors and bad textures, and all those little things that didn't used to be bad, but are now. Like gold and laughter-- the slip of satin, the smell of blood-- the even-pressure curl of a hand across the back of his skull, fingers twined in his hair--

“Some lessons are harder than others.” Caduceus continues, scrubbing the cloth down his forearm with the gentle pull of someone who understands pain.

Caleb isn't sure what lessons he's learned. Maybe they are lessons in strength. In the debilitating weakness of attachments. At how they can cripple a man. He broke for the water of the womb, and he broke for the covenant of blood. Lost his given family-- he looks out at their slumbering forms sprawled around him-- and gained an  adopted one. He traded away parts of himself to keep it alive, and the worth of that still sits unmeasured in his chest.

“Why are you still here?” Caleb asks, watching the rasp of the cloth up his arm, stares at where it swipes away stripes of diluted crimson. “...after everything.”

Caduceus frowns, pausing to dip the cloth back in the water, the blood soaked into it dissipating in a violent blossom. “She told me to go with you, and with you I'll stay.”

His god then, that goddess, the mother of the wild. “You do not question her?”

“Why would I? She's never led me wrong before.”

Leading. Lessons. Every tenement has a purpose. ‘Listen closely, Caleb.’

“And this lesson--” Caleb moves to grab the firbolg’s arm instead. Ignores where the bloodied water drips from his arms onto the other's pale fur-- _stains it like blood scattering snow_ \-- and runs his fingers over the scars littering their expanse. The fur is thin and balded in those areas, standing out starkly against the firbolg' s coat. Unmistakeable. “This one. She needed you to learn that?”

Caduceus shrugs. “I suppose.”

Caleb frowns at his nonchalance. “And what did you learn?”

Caduceus finally shows an inkling beyond impassivity, his lips falling into a grimace. “I'm still figuring that out.”

“You put much faith into your god.”

“I've seen evidence of her workings... I know she's there when I need her.”

“Really?” He frowns, pulling away from the firbolg. “Then why would she let that happen to you? Why would she let any of this happen? If your god-- _verdammt_ \-- if Jester's god is so powerful-’ why would they let this happen to either of you?”

“Because it was meant to be.”

Caleb narrows his eyes. “I do not believe in fate.”

“I'm not saying it's fated necessarily, but maybe it was just the best way for things to go... All of it was the way it had to be.”

“How is that not predetermination?” Caleb asks, withdrawing further, hands trembling, “you let your faith guide you, but what if it guides you into a grave? What if it asks something of you that you can never take back.” He scrubs at the muddied, blood-tinted water on his arms, watches it stain his palms and settle into his skin.  “Faith is dangerous...but blind devotion is worse.”

“You don't think you're tied to any predetermined timeline or purpose then?”

“If I am, it won't matter.”

“You want to bend fate?”

“No.” Caleb shakes his head, huffs out a breath that could be considered a laugh. Curls his fingers into fists around the drying collection of bloodied water caked to his skin. “I want to _break_ it.”

It's silent for a moment, for far too long. The only sound is Caduceus dumping the water to the side, wringing out the cloth, and sifting through his own satchel. He pulls new bandages free; crisp, clean, pristine and untainted. Holds out his hand for Caleb's again and Caleb can't help but eye it warily. There's the itch, the urge, to pick at the open wounds, to relish in that pinprick sensation that curls up at the base of his spine and floods his head.

He passes one arm over.

Caduceus takes it, gingerly winding the new bandages around the semi-cleaned wounds. “What exactly are you planning on doing?”

Caleb says nothing. Watches the wounds get covered up, smothered by white, splotches of red slowly staining the new dressings. When the firbolg finishes with the one Caleb silently passes over the other, the process repeating, the urge to pull away growing with every second fingertips brush his skin. He wonders why Caduceus couldn't have just healed him with a single touch. Effortless, painless, and quick. He wouldn't have to sit here and pretend like his legs aren't quaking where they're folded beneath him, or that for every moment he knows he's safe here-- he knows he isn't.

“Don't think you're above the gods in these matters, Mister Caleb. That's hubris… it will only get you hurt or worse.”

‘Or worse.’

As if he cares about the consequences so heavily. If he tears himself apart in the process it will only be as worse as what's already been done. Success is the only measurable consequence in his head. Failure is an option he can't fathom. He will do it-- _or he will die._

“How can anything the gods do to me be worse than the things that have already been done?” Caleb asks, pulling his arms back as the firbolg finishes, curling them close to his chest and hunching, “why should I have to answer to them when they can't even save their own disciples?”

Caduceus frowns. “It's arrogant of you to question the gods like that, Mister Caleb. Not when they've given you life and food and abundan--”

“Your Wildmother did not save you when she heard you calling for help in that place. Jester's Traveler did not come to her aid when she was inches away from being-- from--” Caleb shakes his head, cursing under his breath, and gesturing at the blue tiefling sleeping beside the others. “Your gods didn't save either of you. We saved ourselves.”

Caduceus seems to contemplate his words. Settling back on his heels, and ashamedly, Caleb can admit he breathes marginally easier when the firbolg retreats.

“She helped me through it,” Caduceus finally says, “I prayed to her and she showed me what guidance she could. If she intervened than what kind of lesson would it be?”

Back to lessons again. Like the tutelage of strict masters with switches in hand; bowed heads, bloodied backs, and Caleb wants to make Caduceus see how none of it makes any sense.

“So she wanted it to happen then-- both gods. _All_ of them. They needed all of that to happen? Is that what you're saying?”

“I suppose so.”

Caleb grits his teeth, fingers curling into fists atop his thighs. He doesn't look up, he doesn't want to see the surety in Caduceus’ face. “Then please tell me...what lesson did they want me to learn?”

“I-- I don't…”

The firbolg stutters, trips over his words and there's a vindictive, viper-quick satisfaction curling hot and buzzing between his ribs at the man's faltering.

“What was I supposed to learn when they branded me, tore my fingernails from their beds, ripped knives over my skin-- collared me like a dog? What about when he-- when I-- “ Caleb shakes his head, dislodging the word-- the _sensation_ of fingers curled possessively over the back of his neck. “If it needed to happen then what was I supposed to learn from it besides everything I already knew?”

Caduceus says nothing and Caleb looks up at him, sees the firbolg just staring at him, a crease between his fallen brows betraying the man's silent distress.

“Was I supposed to learn that I'm worthless, that I'm nothing, that I can't control anything-- That I was arrogant to think I ever could?” Caleb bites it out with every ounce of venom that's curdled from the fear pooled in his gut, “Was it just karma then? Is karma even something you believe in--?”  

“Mister Caleb, I--”

“Your faith isn't everything.” Caleb bites out, “your god is not as good and just as you think she is.” He ignores the way Caduceus’ face has fallen, the growing lines of distress clear across the firbolg’s frame. “No one with that much power-- that much knowledge-- can be benevolent…”

Not when they have to let terrible things happen to terribly undeserving people. Maybe he, himself, deserved it, but not them-- never any of them. And maybe he's speaking out of turn, maybe they'll strike him down where he stands for words born more out of exhaustion than any true arrogance. But he's   _tired_ , and he doesn't want to hear about gods, about powerful individuals, and their plans he never wanted any part in.

Caleb goes to stand and fingers catch his wrist. The answering roar of blood in his ear is like a river,  like the huffing pant of a wolf's breath on his neck--

“I never said she was--”

The firbolg cuts himself off, staring at where he's grabbed Caleb's wrist-- and Caleb stares down at it too. Chest hitching, unsure what the intents of this have turned into when he's sat on his pedestal and insulted this man's entire belief system. There's the sudden, quiet realization that, of all of them, he knows Caduceus the least. That the firbolg could hurt him, could do whatever he wants--

“Let go,” the plea falls from his lips before he can stop it.

“Now, just wait, I--”

“He said ‘let go’.” Another hand comes to rest on Caduceus’ forearm, tanned, wrapped in blue fabric, the exposed portions of the fingers scarred and weathered.

“Beau, there's probably just some misunderstanding here--”

“I don't care.” The monk grits out to Fjord who has risen from his sleep as well, hovering nervously nearby.  “He told you to do something and you didn't listen.” She wrenches Caduceus’ arm away and the firbolg’s already slackened, nearly non-existent grip easily falls. “Don't make the same mistake twice.”

Caleb can see the firbolg’s ears have pressed back, lips fallen into a distressed frown. Fjord is glancing between all of them, a question on his lips, and all Caleb can hear is that river roaring in his skull, the bark and howl of wolves on its banks. Caduceus didn't do anything wrong, if anything, a lesser man might have snarled more, might have reared up in defiance at everything Caleb said, but the firbolg remained patient, only attempting to explain his side of things. Beauregard doesn't seem to care either way, the monk glaring between them, fists clenched at her sides.

He gets to his feet, brushes past the seething monk and towards the treeline. And he's not running away this time-- not even close, but if he stays behind he's not sure what else he might say that he'll only regret later.

The sound of hurried footsteps doesn't halt his progress and he brushes off the hand that clamps down on his shoulder, whirling to face the monk who's come to collect him.

“You don't have to fight my battles for me.”

Beau snorts, crossing her arms. “Stop picking so damn many and I wouldn't have to do shit.”

Caleb bristles, shoulders hiking up and nails biting into his palms. “He implied it was all meant to be-- all of it. Even everything that happened to Yasha. Like her own god wanted that to happen to her.”   ~~ _To me._~~

Beau sighs, avoiding his eyes.

“Do you believe them too?” Caleb gestures back towards the camp, far enough away he can no longer even hear them. “The things he said?”

“The Cobalt Soul is… some of us follow Ioun. Sometimes-- Sometimes I'll pray to her-- when things get real shitty or there's really nothing else left. But I never bought the gods controlling my destiny shit all that much. Or even really coming to help at all sometimes.” Beau shrugs, musing at the wraps on her knuckles. “I think they're just a bunch of powerful motherfuckers.”

It isn't exactly a no from her. And he can't help the low, frustrated snarl under his breath as he turns on his heel again. There's a tension under his skin, coiled tight and incessant, and it's nothing like when he's been reduced to tears. This feels like when they were first captured, when he looked up at smug, heavy-lidded eyes and wanted to watch the slaver burn to ash under his fingers.

“Did you want to hit something?” Beau calls from behind him and he freezes in place.

Caleb shakes his head, fist trembling.

“Let me rephrase that--” She steps forward and he turns to face her, brow furrowed. “Do you _need_ to hit something?”

He nods jerkily despite his better judgement.  

“Swing at me then.”

_“Was?”_

“Hit me.”

“N-” He stutters, narrowing his eyes at her. “Why?

“Because I don't want you shattering your knuckles on some poor tree after I leave.” Beau waves him forward, putting her fists up and widening her stance-- the picturesque scene of a monk raring to fight. “Come on, you know how to throw a punch, right?”

“I--” Of course he does.

“Hit me.” She beckons him forward. “Do it, Caleb. Just fucking lay it on me.”

“No.”

“What?” She tilts her head with a sneer that grates against his nerves. “You think I'm weak? That some limp, noodle-armed wizard is gonna even hurt me in the first place. Nah, I don't think you have it in you.”

She even gets closer, closing the distance between them, unafraid and smirking. There's a spark under his sternum, the ember growing into a flame at her words. And maybe she didn't mean them maliciously, but all he hears is _weak_ echoed in his ears.

She lowers her defenses when he still doesn't move to hit her-- an opening. “Do you _really_ know how to throw a punch, Ca-?”

He cracks his fist across her face the second he sees her fist fall far enough. The sharp pain of it jolts up his forearm and curls up, warm and biting, across his knuckles. There's a moment of still silence, her eyes wide, head still turned from the impact, before her attention snaps back to him, a nearly manic grin and a feverish delight in her eyes.

“There it is.” She crows and boxes her feet, waving him forward again.

He throws another punch, teeth grit and heat flaring across his back, settling heavy on his shoulders. It's unpracticed and sloppy, all lashing out and no finesse. She catches it easily, and he tries to pull at the cage of her fingers, but she doesn't budge, only pulling him in closer.

“I let you lay the first one on me for free,” she says with the sure-fire smirk of someone who knows she'll win this fight no matter what, “now you get to work for it.”

Caleb wrenches out of her grip with the frustrated grinding of teeth. Goes to kick out her knee, but Beau dodges with a delighted grin and an agility he can't hope to match. The monk swiftly replies by burying a fist in his side and landing a kick to the back of his knee before he can even blink. He stumbles down to a kneel, head bowed and gasping, clutching at his side.

She circles him, like a shark at the first scent of blood in the water-- eager and waiting for a scrap.

“Is that all you've got?” She pokes him in the forehead, crouching down in front of him. “I don't think so-- I've seen that anger before, you've still got more to give, Caleb.” She stands, taking two paces back and motioning him up.

He leverages himself to his feet, clutching at his side, fingers spasming over his ribs with each inhale. He won't win this fight. He _can't_. But maybe that's not the point. Not when he can feel his heart pounding away, the roar of blood in his ear, an eagerness tamped between his clenched teeth. Muscles quivering and anticipation sparking down his spine-- the call of a fight, the thrill of a hunt, the numbing emptiness of adrenaline and wildly snapping nerves.

Maybe this is why she likes it so much.

She swings at him and he manages to barely bob out of the way. Another fist careens for his torso and he throws up a shield without really thinking about it and the sparking crackle of magic so readily on his fingertips is thrilling.

She shakes out her hand, eyeing him. “Dirty trick, Caleb, but two can play at that game.”

Beau swipes out with her leg before he can blink, sweeps his ankles out from under him, and he goes down _hard_ , with a harsh cough of air. Gasping at the sudden loss of breath and staring up into the night sky, blinking stupidly at the swirl of starlight. He doesn't expect her to straddle him, hands pinning his wrists where they've fallen.

Everything stutters to a halt-- too familiar-- too-- he doesn't-- The adrenaline starts to twist into something more dangerous and he tosses his head, eyes rolling frantically in their search for an escape--

“You can't freeze up, you need to _focus._ ” Her fingers tighten around his wrists and the small whine that leaves him burns on its way out. “Focus on something-- don't think too much, just act, Caleb.”

He shoves at her grip, tries to buck her off, but she doesn't budge, she doesn't move, and there's-- she's--  He twists his hand in her grip, fingers blackening, only has the slim second of satisfaction where she realizes what he's doing, before there's a firebolt striking her in the chest. With her grip slackened, he shoves her off, scrambling to his feet and panting while she bats at the embers eating away at her shirt.

“What the hell--”

He throws another one at her approach. Backing away, hunching in on himself-- and all he can think about is being pinned down and helpless-- unable to move--

“Caleb, fucking--”

Another firebolt; effortless, mindless, instinctual, _routine_ \-- and she would _never_ \-- but-- but--

“Caleb!”

A fist cracks across his face and he stumbles back, falling to one knee and rubbing at his cheek. Blood blooms across his tongue in a coppery bite that sits heavily in his mouth. Everything snaps back into harsh focus with the monk kneeling in front of him.

“You back with me?”

He blinks at her, shaking his head, and spits his new collection of blood and saliva pooling in his mouth off to the side, before stiffly nodding. Swaying as he gets to his feet, she steadies him with a hand on his shoulder.

“Let's go another round then, but maybe, uh-- maybe no magic this time-- and I'll go easy on you, yeah?” She pats him on the arm and backs off, resuming her defensive stance and eyeing him.  

It's another sloppy round on his part, trying to muster up what little hand to hand he knows. Combat training buried back in the halls of the Soltryce Academy, when they said they should be well-rounded, that even if they were war casters in training, that hand to hand couldn't be neglected for books and spells.

Still, it ends with him flat on his back, staring up at the stars again. The right side of his face one massive, potential bruise, and his ribs and otherwise slowly turning into an aching mess. Turning over with a groan, he clutches at his side, where he's pretty sure Beau's knee dislodged _something_ , but at least it's hard to think about anything else besides the pain--

A hand enters his line of sight, an open palm he accepts easily, and he's hauled back to his feet again. The monk pats him on the back before retreating with an eagerness to her step he hasn't seen in quite some time. She's in every ounce of her element. Even if he isn't much of a fight. More of her punching bag at this point, really. It's nearly pitiful that he can tell she's holding back on him, and yet her hits still make him see more stars than there should be.

“Hit me again,” she beckons him with one hand before settling back into her usual stance.

_’Do you remember anything they taught you at the Academy?’ Eodwulf sneers, eyeing his stance, adjusting his raised fist, kicking his ankle back until his balance is finally even. The teen settles into his own defensive posture once he's satisfied, fists raised in front of him. ‘Now, hit me.’_

Caleb swings at her, knuckles connecting under her jaw with a crack that he can nearly feel in his own teeth when he hears the jarring click of hers. Goes to pull back his arm, but she catches his wrist, sends him a wink, rolls with her step until she's hauling him over her shoulder, and, for probably the fifth time tonight, he's slamming into the ground. Once again reduced to gasping for breath like a particularly pitiful fish that's been hauled from the water one too many times.

“You need to get quicker at that withdrawal, wizard boy.”

He just grimaces, managing to get one hand up to flick her off (an act she's done to every one of them any number of times) and she rolls her eyes. She extends her hand to him again-- and he accepts it.

A few missed hits on his end, some pitiful dodging and ducking on his part-- and another clean blow from her sends him to his knees.

“Come on, Caleb,” she huffs, swiping at the trail of blood under her nose, waving him up.

He staggers to his feet.

_Dodge, swipe, dodge, swipe--_ Another jab to his already abused stomach sends him to his hands and knees, heaving and gagging into the dirt. Swiping at the bile on his lips, he eyes the offered hand again. Contemplates calling it quits, giving in and stopping this cycle she's trapped him in-- he takes her hand again.

It's only fifteen seconds later that he's back on his side, curled up in the dirt, fingers scrabbling at the biting, white-hot pain under his ribs.  

“Again,” she barks.

He gets to his feet--

He manages to land a blow to her sternum that actually has her wincing, before she plants a foot in his chest and sends him sprawling back onto the ground.

“Again.”

He gets to his feet--

She clocks him across his jaw so hard his vision goes white, and he blinks back to awareness collapsed in the dirt. Fingers half-curled in the stalks of grass and his entire face pulsing with the tight heat of bruised and battered flesh. Everything hurts. He feels like he's been hauled over coals and run through the gears of a clockwork machine. He rolls onto his back, groans at the sharp stabs of pain all over him and pants, ribs heaving, heart still hammering away in its cage--

“Get up.”

He turns his head to see Beauregard, still standing, clothes half-singed from his earlier attempts, but only slightly worse for wear than usual.

“Caleb, get up.”

_’Get up.’ Ikithon barks, and he obeys, even if he can feel every bone in his leg shift and grind like minced meat in its casing. He stands, because he knows it will be worse if he doesn't._  He manages to leverage himself up to his knees, curling forward, and hissing out a sharp breath between his teeth.

_‘Get up.’_

He wants to. He needs to. He gets one leg under him, the other-- and he collapses back to the ground. Palms flat against the earth and arms shaking where they're barely holding him up. _’Get up.’_ He needs to-- if he doesn't-- he can't give up-- he has to--

He tries again-- crashes back to his knees, and his chest feels tights, ribs constricting where they're meant to protect him. Fingers digging furrows into the dirt beneath him, eyes hot, and throat closing in on itself. The blood in his mouth tastes like failure, like giving up-- like the distant bank of a river he can't cross, because he's not strong enough to fight the current. He's never been strong enough--

**_’Get up.’_ **

He gets one trembling leg beneath him, pushes up, and goes crumbling back down into the dirt.

**_’Pathetic.’_**

He can't-- He can't-- He just can't--   He shakes his head and fails at keeping the pitiful whine from inching its way out from behind clenched teeth.

“I'm sorry.” He gasps out in a shortened breath, kneeled in the dirt, hoping the reprimand for his failure will at least be a swift one.

“Hey, man, it's okay-- you don't have to--” She crouches down in front of him, tips forward to her knees, and places her hands on his shoulders. “Come on-- fuck, you're gonna make me cry too--” Her breath hitches-- trembling with the beginnings of a storm he knows mirrors the one in his chest. “Fucking asshole.”

She pulls him close, wraps her arms around him, and rests his chin over her shoulder. She still smells like sweat, dirt, and grass-- the smells, crisp and clear in his head. A sob rattles its way out from his ribs and he scrabbles at her back, curls his fingers into the sea of blue she wears.

“I--”, he chokes, “Pl--”, he gasps, words failing him,“ _Beau.”_

A hand cups the back of his skull, arm curling tighter around him and while parts of him scream run-- he doesn't.

“Don't force yourself to talk.” She holds him tighter-- and of everyone he never expected Beauregard to hold him so close-- or to cling onto him as much as he's clung onto her. “I got you.”

He shakes against her, trembling and coltish, legs useless and fawn-like. Practically a newborn compared to the arms holding him up.

“We're okay, Caleb.” She murmurs, chin resting on his shoulder. “We're getting there… you're getting there.”

He hates the sensation of it-- _crying_. There's always a hot shame curled across the back of his neck, holding tight like fingers that remind him it's a weakness, a vulnerability. That he should stop, but each new wracking sob brings another in an endless loop, and he wonders if it's just all the pent up ones he's buried finally cashing in at the worst possible time. It makes his head hurt, it makes his chest feel tight, eyes hot, jaw aching where he's grit his teeth so hard he's afraid something’s popped. Crying feels likes an infection. Hot and impossible to ignore where it's grown under his skin, but a relief when he finally lances it and lets it spill out.

It's a while before he can finally breathe evenly again, and everything comes back into such harsh relief he almost regrets it. His entire body feels like Beau decided to beat him with a bag of rocks for an hour. Which, is pretty close to the reality. And he hates that his head and body have gone and decided to betray him again.

She backs off, still kneeled and looking him over. “You back?”

“Ja…” He avoids looking up at her, even if he didn't miss the way she cried as well-- he still doesn't want to meet her eyes here.

She taps him on the shoulder with her knuckles. “You fucking smell you know.”

The awkward tension snaps like that, and he sighs, palpitating at the bruises littering his face.

“You are… you are not so hot yourself either.”

She snorts, a snide laugh that's more fond than annoyed. “Shut up.”

She gets to her feet, offering him a hand that he accepts one last time. He's hauled to his feet, almost too easily, and he sways, the monk steadying him, keeping her hand on his shoulder until they're both sure he won't fall.

There's still one thing on his mind. “If I… if we spar more… will it help?”

“Huh?” She squints at him, before following his line of sight to her hip, where he knows angry and thin little scars and wounds trail their way down her thigh. “Oh…” She crosses her arms, tucking her hands into her armpits and turning away from him, shrugging. “Sure, maybe.”

“Tomorrow night then?”

“Tomorrow.” She nods.

Caleb narrows his eyes at her. “Why haven't you asked any of the others to spar with you?”

“Because only you're dumb enough to let me use you as a punching bag.”

He gives her the most withering look he can muster while looking the part of said punching bag.

“Naw… I just…” She turns back towards the camp and he follows, limping beside her. “Everyone's busy dealing with their own shit. I don't want to drag them away from that.”

“What about Yasha?”

“Uh…”

“She's not fragile, you know.”

“Oh, no, no gods, no. I know that. I just… not sure how, uh focused on sparring I would be.”

Caleb wrinkles his nose.

“Don't make that face at me, Widogast.”

He side-eyes her, hiding the hint of a smirk. “What face?”

The monk shakes her head, smiling.

“If Yasha will not work… what about Jester then?” he asks, “she could probably pick you up and throw you. I'm sure she can take more than  a few hits. ”

“Yeah…” Beau sighs, fiddling with her necklace. “Yeah, she could. Maybe I'll ask her to help out too.”

“You could also just talk to her…” he continues, “she's very good at that. Talking...”

“I could…”

“I think she might also need someone to talk to as well,” he ventures further.

“I get it, Caleb,” Beau bites out, “we push you to talk and open up and now you're gonna come after all of us too.”

“Karma.” He shrugs, smothering the hint of a larger smile away with his thumb.

Beau snorts, rolling her eyes at him. “Take your karma and shove it up your ass, noodle man.”

Caleb falters in his steps at the insult. “Noodle?”

She turns back to him, brow raised. “Yeah, I mean, look at those arms, what are they going to do, slap me to death?”

He punches her in the shoulder just for that, and immediately regrets it when his entire forearm lights up like he's slipped firecrackers under his skin.

“Fuck, okay, point proven.” The monk rubs at her shoulder, chuckling, waving him off with a grin he's doing his damndest not to mirror. “Now, go get some sleep “

He starts to walk off and rethinks it, turning to look back at her over his shoulder. “Thank you, Beauregard.”

She nods, grunting out an affirmation instead of any empty pleasantry, an acknowledgement rather than a hollow sentiment. Even if it doesn't really feel like it, maybe he's helped her tonight too-- somehow.

There's a strange, alien satisfaction in it as he retreats to his bed roll. Frumpkin greeting him with a soft and curious meow, the familiar twining around his ankles.  It's probably post adrenaline jitters turning into exhaustion, or the inability to think about much else besides how much his body hurts, but it's easier to fall asleep and dream of nothing that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for sticking around with this story if y'all are still here 👌🙏 ❤❤ i appreciate y'all a ton~


	25. The Wolf (Part 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I lied. 
> 
> and its been awhile. But I had this chapter done. didn't like it. spent the past few weeks redoing it, rewriting some older parts of this fic, going back and editing, and rereading, and being a general unorganized mess over this story. 
> 
> But I, uh,, have a new chapter done. And it's long (and cheesy), like usual. sorry about that. Someone should probably just,,, take away my keyboard at some point.
> 
> Posted a small Yasha POV oneshot from this AU if anyone wants to take a read- [link](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19180666)

He wakes up to Jester poking his cheek with her holy symbol and Beau standing behind her with an amused tilt to her lips. The healing magic does wonders for the bruises and he's sure his face looks leagues better than it did after he took a fist to it one too many times. 

The tiefling helps him to his feet and Beau claps him on the shoulder, all with a smug smile he grimaces back at. Brushing her hand off, he spares her a look she returns with a terse nod, before following Jester towards the others. 

He's well aware he's not exactly made for scrapping, that he can't take as many hits as all the others, but it won't stop him from doing it all over again tonight if she'll let him-- if he needs to.

Caduceus silently passes him a dish when Caleb settles down for breakfast with the others, adds his own dose of healing with a brush of his hand, and sits down next to him with a cup of tea clutched in his fingers. As if nothing ever happened... 

“I'm sorry.” The firbolg begins, sipping from the dark brew. “I shouldn't have said that to you.” 

Caleb pokes at the assortment of roots and greens on the dish. “It is...fine.”

“No, it wasn't. I shouldn't have said it and I did, and I can't change that. But I can at least apologize.” 

Caleb nods, not meeting the firbolg's eyes. “I am sorry for what I said as well.” 

“Don't worry about it. You gave me a few things to consider that I hadn't before.” Caduceus pauses, sighing. “And it's not my place to judge...” 

Caleb can tell there's more there. Remembers the quiet disapproval when he would bury himself in a tankard, the same poison settled beside the firbolg’s elbow, entirely untouched. The linger of rose-tinted eyes when he first stumbled down into the tavern in Zadash, head as high as the clouds, and only Caduceus met him with continued scrutiny every time after-- from what Caleb can still recall at least.

“Just… maybe think about your decisions before you make them.” Caduceus sighs. “Think about this plan of yours and what it means… for you and for everyone else.”

Caleb picks at one of the cooked tubers on his plate, still avoiding looking over at the firbolg’s far too pensive eyes. 

“Your actions don't only affect you, Mister Caleb. Sometimes they affect the whole. You're not just one tree… You exist in a forest and if you burn, the whole forest burns with you.” Caduceus stands, and Caleb finally looks up at him. “Don't forget that you're not alone, even when you think you might be…” 

The firbolg wanders off, tea and all, and Caleb watches him go. Turns back to his meal and eats without having to force himself to for once, the subdued chatter of the others around him a calming balm that he focuses on. And he can't help but turn over the firbolg's words in his head, again, and again, and again--

\------

The air has started to shift the further south they go.

Caleb can't exactly describe it, but there's a taste on the wind, like salt, and he wonders how close they are to their destination now as the others gather around the stopped caravan. 

Caleb would rather they not stop to burn time on this endeavour, but a few of the others heard and saw animals, and suddenly pressing forward wasn't an option.  He stays on the outskirts of it all, only glancing up every so often as the owner shows off all manner of pets from his caged collection. The sight of iron bars unnerving, and he keeps Frumpkin scarfed around his neck as a reminder. 

There's a loud squawking sound, like the shrill, throaty call of some bird and Caleb startles at the sound. He looks towards the others to see that Molly's managed to cover himself in birds somehow and that there's a rather emerald-shaded peacock wandering around his feet, seemingly to Jester's delight. 

Caleb wanders over himself, already regretting his decision when the peacock perks up and stares at him, cocking its head, turning to and fro to inspect him. 

“Did you really just buy all of those?” Beau asks, as incredulously as Caleb feels at the sight. “Where did you even get the money for that?” 

“I have my ways.” The tiefling smirks, shrugging. “And pretty birds don't belong in cages. It's not like I plan on keeping them all anyways.” 

“Why are they still hanging around you though?” Jester asks, poking at a small, brightly colored finch perched on Molly's horn. 

“I think it's cause of this.” Molly holds up the bag of food, presumably given to him by the man rummaging around beside one of the cages, and the birds all seem to turn to it at once. The peacock scratches at the ground, feathers rustling and resettling as it stares up at Molly, nearly unblinkingly.

“I think that one is hungry.” Caleb points out; deadpan and inflectionless. Mildly disappointed in this poor financial endeavor and with a mounting mortification Molly might decide to truly keep any of them. 

“Probably.” Molly smirks, looking down at it and back to him with a grin. “He’s a gorgeous boy, isn't he?” 

It seems to preen, strutting to the side and tilting its beak up at him, and if a bird could ever be considered haughty he thinks this one might be. It starts to peck at his boots, and Caleb shuffles back as it scratches at the ground again and eyes his familiar. Frumpkin seems reluctant to let anything slide here, however, and stands on his shoulders, hissing down at the bird as it fans its tail feathers in a rather impressive display. 

"You know," Molly laughs, seemingly delighted at the sight, “I kinda want to keep him.” 

Caleb takes a few steps back, until Frumpkin finally settles back down with an unamused huff. 

“We do not need _two_ horny peacocks in this party.” he deadpans, shaking the bird off where it's decided to follow and pull at a buckle on his boot. 

Jester muffles her laughter behind her hand, Fjord shoots the tiefling a _look_ , Yasha just shrugs-- but Beau-- Beau is less subtle. Slugging Molly in the shoulder, barking out a raucous laugh that has the bird turning to her with a shrewd eye. Molly himself looks two parts delighted and one part mortified, the tips of his ears turned fuschia and lips split into a cat's grin.

“What can I say?” The tiefling shrugs. “I have a brand.” 

“Is that brand loud and obnoxious?” 

“ _Ouch_.” Molly places a hand over his sternum. “You wound me deeply, Widogast.”

“I am sure your ego can take a hit or two...” 

“You're right." Molly smirks. “But when _you_ insult me, it's extra painful.” The tiefling clasps his hands under his chin, batting his lashes. “So won't you take pity on a poor soul, _Caweb_?” 

He narrows his eyes at the awful butchering of his name. “No.”

“‘Caweb’?” Beau sneers. “What are you five?” 

“Technically, I'm two, so--” 

“Gods...” Fjord rubs at his eyes with a long sigh, turning on his heel to presumably wait out this shit show somewhere else, when suddenly there's a sharp yip from one of the carts.

The half-orc freezes and turns with the rest of them towards the continued yapping.  A small bundle of fur poofs into existence with a sudden puff on the dirt road, barreling its way into Jester's boots and flopping over onto its side with a delighted bark.

The owner moves first, hurrying over and reaching for the wriggling pup. “Oh, terribly sorry, he's in the process of being trained to stay in the area of his cage and we--”

Jester, not unexpectedly, moves faster. 

“Aren't you just the cutest thing to ever exist!” Jester all but squeals, and even Caleb winces at the sheer volume of it as she hoists the puppy into her arms and coos. 

“Damn… that's actually a really cute puppy,” Beau grumbles, the owl, he assumes she bought earlier, still perched on her arm. 

“You already have your owl, don't be greedy,” Molly remarks and Beau shoots him a glare. 

“Shut up. You have like a whole rainforest of birds on you, asshole.”

“I _want_ him.” Jester declares, cutting Molly's retort off, nuzzling the puppy, and Caleb decides in that moment he'll have to be voice of reason if no one else will. 

“We should think logically about this for a moment. What exactly are we going to do with all of these pets?” He asks, brow furrowing and nervously scratching at Frumpkin's scruff.

“Not to mention if you buy any of these, you better remember it's _your_ responsibility to care for them and keep ‘em safe. We don't exactly get into the most pet friendly situations,” Fjord interjects, arms crossed and jaw squared. 

Jester just holds the puppy out towards the half-orc. “But blinky doggy, Fjord.” 

Caleb can see the moment Fjord concedes, and he doesn't blame him, you would have to be stupid to say no to two pairs of puppy dog eyes. Even if one of the pairs belongs to an animal that will grow up to be all manners of distasteful and loud. 

And with very large, _very_ sharp teeth.

“Hundred gold for the dog.” The menagerie owner chimes in, hand extended.  

“Oh…" Jester pouts, “I don't have enough.” 

“I shoveled out almost all of my shit for Gustav…" Beau sighs, “I've got… maybe thirty gold left? Sorry, Jes."

“It's fine…” Jester starts to hand over the puppy and Caleb exchanges a quick glance with Fjord. 

“Ahem, excuse me, wait a moment,” Fjord starts, “a hundred gold seems mighty steep for such a tiny and weak companion as this.” 

The owner shoots Fjord a tight-lipped smile. “Yes, however he grows up to be _very_ large and _very_ valuable. So, if you cannot afford him at full price, I simply can't part with him.” The owner reaches for the puppy and Caleb can see Jester's face falling as she goes to relinquish it. 

He takes a step forward. “Even a mere discount to eighty gold?” Caleb tries, fruitlessly as the man shoots him an even tighter smile.He can already see the owner won't budge at all.

“I apologize, I simply cannot lower the--” 

“One hundred gold pieces,” Yasha interrupts, dropping a small pouch in the man's outstretched hand. 

The man blinks owlishly, before counting the gold and shooting the barbarian a winning smile. “Thank you for your kind patronage, miss. The dog is all yours.” 

“And food?” Yasha asks briskly, crossing her arms. 

“Oh, y--yes of course.” The man nervously hands over the supplies to Jester who is still busy gaping at Yasha. 

“Is that all?” The man twitters nervously, visibly perturbed and Caleb almost feels bad for him. Almost. 

“That's it,” Yasha says and the man skitters off to the head of the caravan, calling out orders to the others before they hastily set off. 

“You could  have intimidated him into lowering the price, you know.” Molly points out, nudging her in the side. 

“It's fine,” she waves him off, looking down at the dog clutched in Jester's hand.

“Oh gosh… thank you so much, Yasha,” Jester gushes, holding the puppy close to her face and grinning; a wider, happier grin than Caleb's seen in awhile. 

“It's no problem…” The barbarian mutters, ducking her head a bit. 

Jester holds the puppy out to her, smile bright and wide. “You wanna help me name him, Yasha? Since you're co-owner and--” 

“For the record, I named the owl Professor Thaddeus.” 

“Well, he _is_ smarter than you.” 

“Shut up, Molly, what the hel--” 

“-- we can call him Sparky, or Donut-- Oh! What about Poptart? No? Well, what abou--” 

Caleb tunes out their overlapping chatter, turning to Nott who's eyeing where the caravan has taken off down the road. She's been quiet nearly the whole time and he's not sure what's had her tongue held up. 

“Is something wrong?” He asks. 

“No.” Nott shakes her head.“I'm just glad Jester didn't buy that crimson weasel.” 

Caleb didn't know Jester had been contemplating a weasel before the dog, but he's glad they don't have another pet to deal with as well. 

Caleb frowns. “Why?” 

Nott looks over at him, and he truly can't tell if she's smiling or baring her teeth. “I might've eaten it.” 

Caleb can't help the amused huff that leaves him. 

“Do you think it would have tasted like red-flavored candy?” Nott continues, only partially serious judging by the amused wriggle to her ears.

“Nott?” Caleb shakes his head, trying not to smile. 

“What?” she asks.

“Don't ever stop being you.” 

Nott shoots him a snaggle-toothed smile before dropping her gaze to her feet, green, uncovered toes wiggling in the dirt. “...maybe...” she mutters. 

“Caleb! Nott! Come on, we still got a ways to go for the shore!” Fjord calls from back at the cart, cutting off anything Caleb could have possibly asked in response to that. 

“Come on.” He holds out his hand for hers. "Let's go."

There's a small pause, where Nott looks down at her fingers and flexes them, watching the way they move-- seeming to inspect them far too closely, before taking his.

\----

They stop for the second night past the gates with claims that the shore is just in reach.

It's not fully dark yet, the sky orange and red, a tinted, stained-glass sprawl of a sunset that he traces through the veins of clouds strung overhead. He briefly contemplates approaching Beauregard about sparring again, but the monk is preoccupied with her owl, Fjord and Molly assisting her by playing rather colorful and loud  targets to the raptor-- so he leaves her alone for now. He can always ask later, and the smile on her face speaks wonders for how she's feeling at the moment anyways. 

And while the animals may be a bad choice in retrospect sometime in the future, for now they've brightened up the camp, and he understands the value of a furry (or even feathery) companion all too well. The fey in question is curled up in his lap while he reads, half listening to Beau shout commands to an owl who seems reluctant to obey and to Jester and Yasha still deliberating over the puppy's name. 

It's a mostly one-sided conversation that he tunes out in favor of the opened tome balanced on his knee. Lucky stone in one palm, finally imbued with the incantations and enchantments he needs it to be so that it will work. He rubs his thumb over the spirals etched into the surface, the rough spiral arrangement of arcane symbols he carefully carved into the stone. He'll have to remember to change its function when he needs to, determine what will be most useful before it's too late to do so each time, and-- 

"Mister Caleb." 

Caleb looks up to see Caduceus extending a bowl towards him, the others having changed positions from where he last saw them, and the sky grown even darker. A small fire casts the area in a pleasant glow and he wrinkles his nose at the heady, mesquite tang of smoke that wasn't there before. 

He accepts the offered dish, dismissing the lost time for what it is, curls his fingers around the heated ceramic and stares into the soup. It's still simple, still plain, but there's more to it than just a broth now. 

"I figured since you've been able to keep more hearty foods down no problem that we could move on to something a bit heartier." Caduceus settles down in front of him. "And I'm not one to eat meat, but you probably need protein." 

He knows the firbolg is vegetarian, that he doesn't prepare or eat meat, and so he frowns at the insinuation. "You did not have to--" 

"Don't worry." The firbolg smiles, lazily and all kinds of reassuring. "I got Yasha to do the messy parts." 

Caleb ducks his head. "Danke." 

"It's no problem." 

There's more he wants to say, but he isn't sure how to, and he lets his silence fill the gap. He just tucks into the meal and hands Caduceus an empty bowl when he's finished; the most of an apology he can offer here, and the firbolg takes it with a nod before wandering off again. 

Caleb watches him go. It doesn't feel as if there is any contention left between them. Caduceus doesn't seem like the sort to hold any kind of grudge so tightly and Caleb isn't keen to cling onto one here either. He's as content to let it pass as the firbolg seems to be as well. 

So he turns back to the opened tome in his lap, thumb running over the carved stone's surface again, and Frumpkin purring along his neck.

\-----

Jester approaches him after they've all eaten and dusk has creeped up past the trees and into the sky, the stars winking to life overhead.

He notices the new pup (unanimously named Nugget) first, the dog fast asleep in a makeshift sling Yasha fashioned for the tiefling to wear. Both events which he glanced up at, watched from across the fire as the barbarian carefully braided the frayed ends of the fabric together, before handing it off to Jester. And the puppy is nearly comically over-sized for the sling, large paws flopping out and tongue lolling, but it seems content, and Jester has probably carried heavier-- 

“Caleb?” 

He blinks, brow scrunching, wetting his lips for a moment, head a bit fuzzy, tongue dry, like he's still waking from a dream. “Ja.” 

“Well...” She rocks on her heels, tapping at her cheek and pointedly avoiding his eyes. “I was talking to Yasha earlier… and I have an idea for something I want to try with the both of you. It's kind of like the drawing thing, a bit, but it's a little bit different. And I just wanted to see if you wanted to try it out, you know. You don't have to though-- I understand if you want to keep working on your wizard stuff--” 

"Ja." He says, unsure how long she would remain and ramble if he didn't. He leverages himself to his feet, taking a moment to gather his tomes and materials before turning to her again. “Ja, okay...Ah, lead the way.” 

He follows her away from the camp, the transmuter's stone in his pocket allowing him to still see in muted sepias; in greys and stark contrasts rather than colors. But he can, at the least, still see out here, and it means the stone has worked. That something has at least come to fruition in that particular endeavor. But he's unsure what Jester means to accomplish here. If it's as simple and functional as his spellwork-- or a task as impossible as trying to turn a stone into gold.

He taps his fingers over the pocket he's hidden it in, steps faltering. Jester doesn't seem to notice it when he stops, staring at her retreating form as she continues to march ahead with the sure tromp of booted feet.

"We do not have to do this you know..." he says before he can rescind the thought, lips moving before he really knows why he said it in the first place.

She turns on her heel, cocking her head. "Do what?" 

"This..." He points between them. "There are places, people, professionals-- there are head shrinks for this kind of thing...so that  the burden does not fall on people like you... to walk people like me through these things." 

It's a predicament that's been gnawing at him ever since she laid her sketchbook in front of him the first time. Since any of them offered to help him. The knowledge of being an emotional burden in the midst of this party weighs heavily on his shoulders. And he doesn't want any of them to feel obligated to hold his hand, he does not want them to treat him differently for this. 

He is their friend-- not their patient.  

Not something for them to look after, to keep a close eye on, to handle carefully-- to press the pieces back together when he cracks. None of that is their responsibility and he is not the delicate thing to be shelved, placed apart from them, and coddled. The thought of them talking down to him, constantly shielding him, keeping a close eye on him because they don't trust his judgement; all of it grates against him. He is not some breakable centerpiece, and he's afraid his confessions, everything he's told them-- might have done the thing he feared. Changed the way they look at him, the way they think about him. 

Part of him doesn't mind the help, doesn't mind the conversations, the little things, but another, a larger one, one that bares its teeth and crouches in its corner-- scarred and shaped with the clouting pattern of fists and feet-- it doesn't want any of it-- this. Not if it means they turn their attention on him and _keep_ it there 

"There is and there are..." She agrees quietly after a moment, ducking her head. "And you stayed in one, didn't you?" She looks back up, eyes pinched. "In an asylum..." 

He ducks his head. "I did." 

"And they helped you where they could, didn't they?" 

Caleb sighs, fingers tapping quickly over the stone in his pocket, other hand turned to wringing in his scarf. "Yes...maybe, but that was their _job_ , Jester." He glances up at her, brows furrowed. "You are not being paid to do this, you're not-- you are my _friend._ You are not my doctor. None of you are…And I--" He bites down on the words, unsure how to get this entirely across to her.

"Caleb," she starts, serious and drawn, none of the usual played out drawl or lilt to it. "And I ask this with the utmost sincerity… do you _not_ want our help?"

No, that's not it. That's-- It's--

"I don't-- I--" He shakes his head. "You are not some tool to fix me. You are a healer... and you fix physical wounds, but it is not your duty to fix the mental ones as well."  

"It isn't," she agrees, nodding. "And I'm not trying to ' _fix_ ' you-- I'm just asking you to draw sometimes, I'm just talking to you, I'm asking you to _think_ , Caleb. You're doing more on your own here than you might think."  

"Even then--" He worries at the knit of the scarf, the one her and the others gifted him. Looks down at all the colors of it and runs his fingers over the woven texture. "You… you have your own troubles-- we all do, and it is selfish to let you focus on me. I should not use you all to--" 

"You still think you're using us?" she asks, voice shaky.

He glances up. "I am using you...all of you..."

She purses her lips. "Maybe…." 

Caleb sighs, already taking a step back, turning on his heel. 

"But--" she starts and he hears the shift of grass behind him, footsteps. "Wait, Caleb--" A hand falls on his shoulder and he freezes, going rigid. "Just please tell me what's bothering you about this?" 

He huffs out a wry laugh and he can't help it. Because that's just it. They're always asking him if he's okay, looking after him now, doting and kind, caring and attentive, but they neglect themselves in favor for worrying after him now-- and he hasn't missed it. Not in the small things they do. In the things he thinks they don't notice, or even in the more obvious ways they tell him. As if patching him up will somehow patch them up in the process too. 

"What's wrong?"

And it's the same way she's always asked it. But she never answers the question when it's pointed at her. Content to constantly pick at their wounds and tend to them, but anytime one of them tries to do the same she closes off, covers it up with a smile. And he's only seen past the facade a few times, but only a handful. 

"That's the thing. You always ask us what is wrong, but who asks you?" He fists his hands into his scarf, bunching it up close to his sternum, ignoring the way his nerves skitter the longer her hand sits on his shoulder.  "You would just-- just let us stomp all over you if it meant we were happy..." 

He can feel her recoil, the hand slipping off his shoulder. "I--" 

He turns to face her again, brows furrowed and the beginning traces of venom laced in his voice. "You-- you let us walk all over you and pretend you are still happy for it, but at least we are smiling, right?"

Her eyes narrow, fists clenching at her sides, tail lashing in a snap behind her. "I don't do this _just_ because I want to see you smile, don't be _stupid._ " 

"Then why? It's not your duty, or your obligation to do any of this, for any of us." 

"Because you're my _friends,_ " she bites out, shoulders hiked up. "Because I know how to help a little bit… And I know a few techniques for some of this stuff and I want to share them with you and the others, because maybe I give a shit about you all." She wrinkles her nose, face scrunching. "And I know my boundaries, Caleb, I'm not stupid-- don't treat me like I'm stupid." 

He shakes his head, brow furrowing. "You're not stupid…" Caleb sighs, shuffling a step back. "I just… emotional labor isn't your burden to carry here too, Jester." 

"I know it isn't." She purses her lips, face falling. "And I'm not the one carrying it, I'm just giving you a chance to help you shoulder it all a little bit better." She gestures to all of him with a general sweep of her hand. "The bulk of the work is still all on you, Caleb." 

She says it with a layer of confidence he trusts at least. He's still skeptical, still wary, still unsure if she truly isn't letting any of them walk all over her-- but it's also not his place to question what she wants to do here. And if she wants to help him-- all of them, he also won't tell her no or that she can't. It's her choice to make, as long as she knows she can step back, that there's lines here and she doesn't have to, nor should she cross them. 

"Okay…" he starts, brows turning down for a moment. "Okay, but If it is ever… If you ever do not want to--" 

She reaches for his hands, cradles them in her own and he meets her eyes. "I'll let you know if I'm ever uncomfortable or don't want to do this anymore, okay?" He nods at her pause and she smiles wide. "And you'll let me know if you don't want to draw or talk about this stuff anymore either, right?" 

He nods again. He can try not to lie at least... 

"Good!" She beams, dropping his hands and turning on her heel. "Now, come on, Yasha's waiting." 

He follows, closer this time, gaze locked onto the grass beneath his feet. There's a small weight slipped off his shoulders at least, but there's still an unease there. That she-- that none of them, should waste their time on this-- on him, on whatever is dug into the pitted, acrid and murk ridden depths of his head. 

It's not long before they reach a small clearing and he glances back, the glow of the fire from the original camp still visible behind them. He pulls the copper wire from his coat (left pocket, third down) and twines it around his wrist before turning back to follow Jester again. Fingers pulling at the chilled metal, knowing he can at least contact Nott or one of the others if something happens.  

Yasha is there, her sword beside her, already settled down for this meeting-- whatever it may be. Jester gestures for him to sit as well and he picks a space not too close, but not obscenely far from the barbarian. He shifts uncomfortably once he's settled, legs crossed before him, letting Frumpkin slip from his shoulders to spill into the barbarian's lap in lieu of a greeting. 

The blue tiefling sits down across from them and Caleb briefly glances up to night settling in overhead, notes the stars, lingers on the Hyades cluster, and recites the names of each constellation he can recall in his head.

He knows they're farther out from the others than he would like to be-- that this could be a repeat of what happened last time-- he slips his fingers under the copper wire and tugs at it, feels the bite of metal along the back of his wrist. It does little to settle the encroach of nerves spidering up his neck.

He turns his attention back to the blue tiefling, hoping to at least find some distraction there from the rest of the unknown crouched and waiting around him.  

Jester seems to consider something for a moment, sending a look to Yasha who nods back, the puppy squirming in its sling until Jester shushes it and soothes it back to rest. The tiefling sighs, looking to him again, and he wonders just how much the two have been conversing, and if Jester's been doing the same for the barbarian as she does for him. 

"Okay… _well_ …I suppose I should start." Jester's tail slides across the grass behind her, finger twirling nervously at the Traveler's symbol at her waist. “Sometimes talking about things that hurt... can make them hurt less. And in the moment it may not feel like that, you know?” Jester starts, turned to wringing her hands. 

“But maybe it's a bit like-- like poison I guess. All shitty and gross, and none of it feels very good, and If you keep it in the wound it gets all bad and icky, and it can't really heal because of it either, right? _So_ ," she draws out, "you have to drain it, and it'll hurt when you do, but then… _Then_ it'll get better eventually!” She finishes with a flourish and a smile, before scratching the back of her neck, avoiding both of their eyes. “Maybe the scar won't ever go away and neither will the memory of how you got it…. but it will hurt a little bit less. It'll be able to heal.” 

Caleb spares a cursory look at the barbarian as Jester speaks, Yasha's hands idly petting over Frumpkin, the familiar curled and content in her lap. There's rummaging, the sharp clink of glass, and he turns back to see Jester pulling a familiar set of supplies from her haversack. 

“But saying things out loud is hard.” She hands over a piece of parchment to each of them as well as a quill and Caleb accepts it. Glancing over to Yasha who does the same, but more cautiously, delicately-- like she's afraid it will snap under her grip. 

“So, I thought it might be good to try and, I don't know, write out what you can. Maybe just… write a letter addressed to someone-- to _anyone_ in your past. Good or bad. Tell them something you can't tell them right now, or would never say out loud.” Jester finishes, almost nervously waiting for their response, fingers clasped close to her sternum. 

“A letter?” Caleb asks, raising a brow. 

“Yeah! You know, like, ‘ _Dear, Mr. Fancy-pants, so glad to--’.”_

“Ja, I know what a letter is…” he cuts her off gently. “It's just...been awhile.” 

"Oh! And when you're done we can burn them." Jester adds in a nearly conspiratorial whisper, a hand cupped over her mouth as she leans close. "No one has to see them."

Caleb nods, fiddling with the pen, watches Yasha begin to write, and stares down at his own blank paper. He used to write… when his mother's bookshelf wasn't restocked fast enough, when the harvest wasn't good and they couldn't afford the cheaper books at the market.  When she was busy toiling outside while father was away for the military. More a mindless journal, a habit he carried to school, to Ikithon, to now; in the book full of nearly mad ramblings tucked under his arm. 

But a letter addressed to his past? Never that. And he has many people he could write one to. Ikithon, his parents, Astrid, Eodwulf, even himself. The naive him, the him before-- the young, bright-eyed prodigy with everything laid out before him and opportunity at his fingertips. He wonders if he should write a letter, one that tells himself that the academy isn't worth it, that it won't make anyone proud in the long run. It just makes everyone dead. 

And there's another person he could write to, the person he thinks Jester might _want_ him to write to here. Someone who's probably more aptly relegated down to a some _thing_ rather than any equal standing humanoid. A monster, something story book and intangible. Something still there, with gold, spit-shined teeth and cold eyes, like the nightmares he used to curl up in his mother's arms over. But this one isn't some figment of his imagination-- he didn't make this one up. It's not a fable, no matter how much he wants it to be. 

He pulls the paper close, settles one of his tomes under it and balances it in his lap. Prompts Frumpkin to make his way back to him and only breathes easier when the cat curls up beside his thigh. Part of him feels bad, nearly selfish, for depriving Yasha of the cat, but he needs Frumpkin here. 

He shuts his eyes, fingers curling around the quill, head bowed. Absently listens to the croak of frogs and the distant whine of insects he doesn't know the names of, to Jester rising-- the tiefling wandering off, presumably to give them some privacy here-- and he starts to write. 

_‘The only things I knew about you was that your name was Lorenzo, that you were a slaver, and that you were a monster.’_

Admittedly, a bit of a kitschy start, and he feels a bit like a fool writing this. At the same time, it's the first time he's seen Lorenzo's name in writing since then, it's concrete and he can't erase it. He runs his finger over it, watches it smudge and smear under his touch. He could scratch it out where it glares back at him, but that doesn't change the fact that he gave the wolf a name. It's real name. Not just some story in his head. It's still only ink on parchment, but it's truer than any fairy tale he knows, and the sight of it written so plainly, so innocuously, makes his skin crawl.  

 _‘You hurt my--’_ He pauses, searching for the right word for it all, before deciding on the only ones that make sense. _‘Friends. My family. You left marks on them I can't take away, that won't ever go away. You tortured us, you starved us, you tied us up like animals, you collared us like dogs. You hurt them.’_ He pauses. _‘You hurt _all_ of us.’_

 _‘You r--’_ He scribbles the beginning of that line out, the word still a visceral kick to the gut that makes his teeth rattle and grind. _‘You made me say yes to something I would have never agreed to.’_

He goes to fold the paper, throw this away and forget about it, but he stops. He wants to crumple it up, toss it in the fire and erase the words from existence. This is stupid, this whole idea, it feels like he's taking the quill and driving it up under his ribs and pulling it through every organ. And he's barely even written anything. He could stop here-- he _should_ stop here--

 _‘And all I have to say is this;’_ he writes instead, his hand nearly moving without him, words writing themselves onto the parchment nearly without his permission. _‘You are a wolf. You are a predator. You are the thing that mother's tell their children about late at night when the day draws to a close. You are everything that we forget exists in this world until you remind us in all the ways you've learned how.’_

He squints at the words. It's edging into melodrama, but he's going to burn this anyways. It doesn't matter. He just has to get it out somehow now that he's started. Just cut it out, like an infection, like poison, like venom--

 _‘You are dead. You are gone. But I can still feel--’_ Caleb pauses, the quill tip trembling against the paper. It's stupid-- this shouldn't be hard to just write out. It's not like he has to say it or contemplate it so heavily, like it hasn't been weeks, a month even, since it happened-- 

_‘I can still feel your breath. I can still feel your hands. I can still feel your skin against mine.'_ He hunches into himself for a moment, eyes screwed shut, flinching against something he can't see or feel, and Frumpkin kneads his paws into his thigh until it's all he can focus on. He finally opens his eyes to see ink has slipped messily across the parchment, some words smudged and ink staining his fingers. He continues, teeth grit, jaw clenched. _'I can still smell you. I can still hear you. I can still taste bile and blood and sweat. Feel your teeth in my shoulder. You crushing me. Your fingernails dug into my hips. You haven't left. You haven't died. I haven't killed you.’_

He breathes heavily, chest hitching. Thinks back to a promise he made to himself, an eternity past now. Something buried in the before of all of this. 

_‘But I will. I _will_ kill you. One day.’_

He thinks back to looking out at a grinning face, of gold teeth and cracked lips, framed by the bars of a cage as Lorenzo peered in at all of them. Like they were nothing but an amusing collection of brightly colored birds to him. Just pets he caught and would sell to the next bidder with enough coin. A bunch of caged birds he could make sing if he wanted to, if he snapped his fingers and told them he needed them to. 

_‘I am not your caged bird._ ’ And he's not, none of them are. Not anymore.  

 _’I am Caleb Widogast.’_ He underlines the name, twice, then a third time, then a fourth. It's his, he chose it, and it's no one else's. And Lorenzo never learned it. Never learned any of their names in that place. Because he never cared, because identity terrifies a man who does everything to take it away from someone.

He contemplates finishing it there, breath shaky, hairline fractures creeping up that wall in his head, the entirely non-existent sound of it splintering is deafening in the silence, each breath pulled from him like a jagged knife through his side. He scrawls one final line at the base of the paper, quill shaking, an ink blotch bleeding into a shapeless silhouette as he presses a full stop into the page and looks it over. The words glaring back at him--

_‘And I am free.’_

He reads it over and it feels… trite. Silly. Numbly poetic. Nearly cheesy. But those four words mean everything. He folds up the parchment, dropping the quill in the grass, chest hollowed, an emptiness on his shoulders and in his head.

Jester returns, and he looks up at her, the tiefling swaying on her heels, hands clasped in front of her, thumbs twiddling. Caleb turns to the earth beneath him instead of saying anything, to the dried and lifeless patches sprawled under his legs. He sets the letter aside, reaches forward, buries his fingers in the crumbling soil and pulls. More hands join him, deathly pale and blue beside him, until they've dug out a small pit in the earth. He doesn't even have to say anything before Yasha and Jester are dropping dried leaves and twigs into it, before the small fire pit is complete, before he reaches a hand in. Calls fire to his fingers and watches the collected underbrush catch and curl into orange, dancing fingers of light.

The small fire wavers before him and he glances to Yasha, who's finished her own piece as well, her eyes distant, dirt-packed fingers caught around the folded parchment. She dips her head in a small nod and there's a solidarity that can't be articulated in so many words as they both drop their folded stories into the flames.

Caleb watches the paper curl at the edges, blackening and  flaking, heat making the crease expand, the parchment hinging open so the inked words are visible as it goes into a parody of death throes. 

And it's oddly satisfying, watching fire devour paper. 

It's not the candle wax, glossiness of flesh, it doesn't slough and slip and boil, it just crumbles and turns into ineffectual bits of ash that don't scream or wail-- that don't cry. It's a silent eulogy and he pulls his knees to his chest, arms wrapped around his legs, Frumpkin rumbling with purrs across his shoulders. 

And It's a quiet moment, a silent moment that's punctuated by the pop and crackle of the fire, only shattered when Jester stands, dusting off her dress. 

"I'll just be…" Jester gestures jerkily, wandering off again, standing at the edge of their small, impromptu encampment, waiting-- giving them a moment here it seems. 

"Caleb?" Yasha starts first.

He doesn't look up at the barbarian. "Ja..." 

"Thank you--" she says and he goes to recoil at the words.  "--for trying to lower the price on the dog earlier." 

He sighs, scrubbing at the scruff on his jaw with the heel of his palm, glancing to the blue tiefling before whispering. "Jester needs more friends." 

There's a long pause. "She already has them." 

"She needs better ones..." he admits, "And I have been told a dog's love can be unconditional, and that they are very loyal..." 

Another long beat of silence from her and then-- "Do you think… do you think that you are not a good friend?" 

He nods. "Sometimes." 

"Why?" 

"I… I do not remember how to do this. How to be genuine..." He looks up at her, the dying fire casting her in a faint orange glow. "Sometimes it is better to hide, to lie, to keep all of it to myself. Burdening others, exposing wounds and… and hurts like this-- being vulnerable, that is-- it is no way to _survive_." 

"Yes..." she agrees and he ducks his head until he feels a hand on his shoulder. He peers back up to see her crouching in front of him. "But we don't have to just survive any longer, Caleb. We can live too." 

"I think I have for-… that maybe I've forgotten how." 

Yasha sighs, nodding. "Sometimes-- Well… sometimes... I think that too... but then all of you remind me." There's a small smile on her face, a rare sight in itself. "With the small moments, the, uh… the little things, you know... With the laughter… and the smiles." She shakes her head. "And if you weren't a good friend. Not a, uh, well… not a good person… you wouldn't have stayed." 

"I stayed because you all had food and coin... and--" 

"What about--" She cuts herself off, shaking her head. "Then why not leave after? Once you got your share of the platinum? Enough to leave. Live somewhere comfortable... With more coin than I've ever seen..." she asks, eyes narrowed. "Why didn't you leave then?" 

"I--" 

"What if you-- what if you... wanted to stay? Because… maybe-- because even if a part of you didn't think we could help you… That we would help you... Another part did." 

"That is still using you, that is not-- I am not--" 

"Not a good person?" She asks. "Who stayed up with Jester? Drew with her when you found her crying? Who let Beau punch on them?" 

He's not even sure how she knows about those events. "Those are small things, nothing compared to--" 

"And who's there for Nott... time and time again?"

"Yasha--" 

"You don't get to say you aren't a good person here. In the-- in the ah… the small things at least." She sighs, gaze dropping, looking over her own hands as she speaks. "Maybe you've done bad things...Maybe you've hurt people... Maybe you can't wipe that blood off your hands... That doesn't mean that I-- that   _you_ , that we… can't still do good things with them." 

She stands, recollecting her blade, and looking down at him. "Just…" she sighs, "we're here when you need us... And we know you'll be there when we need you." 

He grits his teeth, ducks his head against her words and avoids her eyes as she retreats. She pauses in her steps, whispering a quiet _'good night_ ' under her breath that he returns in his own hushed whisper, before she retreats. 

And he can hear Yasha and Jester talking, the two speaking in whispers he tunes out as he stares at the last vestiges of the impromptu fire, the last bits of inked parchment glaring up at him from the pit.

He stands shakily, sweeps dirt back into it with his foot, watches the flames smother and choke under the onslaught, and swipes another heapful in. Until, finally,  it's just loose earth he tamps down with his heel. 

And it's not Lorenzo's grin, it's not his crumbling, ash-laden skull, but it's still something as he stands there, grinding his heel down into the dirt. He's not sure how long he stands there, but the sound of approaching footfalls has him finally lifting his heel. 

"Come on..." Jester says, barely above a hush. "We should all get some sleep." 

"I think I might stay here for a bit…"

"Are you sure?"

"Ja… I just…" He shuffles in place, eyes locked on the churned patch of earth before he looks back to her. "Do you think you could send Nott out here?" 

Jester nods, glancing back over her shoulder to Yasha before peering back up at him. "You'll be okay though?" 

"And you?" He asks instead, watches her close off against the question like she usually does. 

"I… I will--" She glances back to Yasha again, nervously combing her fingers through Nugget's scruff. "Of course I'll be fine, that's a silly question, Cay-leb." 

She smiles, and it's all teeth and nothing real. 

"Please," he sighs, "make time for yourself too, Jester." 

She shuffles back, rubbing at her arm and avoiding his eyes. "I'll try…" 

He nods and she slinks away, Yasha placing a hand on her shoulder, and he watches the two of them make their way back to the camp.

Sighing again as he settles down beside the patch of earth hiding the burnt letters and the remains of the fire. He runs his palm over it, feels the sift of silt under his fingers and idly turns it over, waiting until he hears the first shift of grass and the cat-footed gait of Nott approaching. 

"Jester sent me..." There's the shuffling of footsteps. "She-- she said you asked for me." The rustle of fabrics and the clink of metal and glass vials betrays her as she sits down before him. "Caleb?" 

“Nott...” he says, finally looking up at her, fingers playing over the dirt grit in his skin. 

“Hm?” 

“I…" He pauses, turns the words over in his head, and even the small amount of prep time wasn't enough to build a script for this. "Is it okay if-- if I…”

“What?” 

“I think…" he breathes heavily, the words like breathing through water. " I think I want to tell someone… some of it, but I… I do not want to tell anyone else… And I do not want to--” He sighs, scrubbing at his forearms with his knuckles. “I also do not want to burden you with this, if you do not want to hear it.” 

“You want to tell me?” She asks, ears dropping, eyes wide. “You _trust_ me?” 

He nods. He knows she knows what he means here. 

“Okay...” she, glances off to the side, lip worried between sharp teeth. “Okay, Caleb.” She holds her hand out to him, palm up. “I'm listening-- I'll...I'll listen.” 

He takes the offered hand in his-- in his right hand where the brand used to sit, the granules of dirt still caught on his palm rasping between their palms. “Should I… should I start from the beginning?” 

“Wherever you're comfortable with… and only tell me whatever you're comfortable sharing.” She squeezes his hand. “Don't force yourself to do this, if you don't want to.” 

“I know, I know… I just… I need to say some of  it… at least once...just once...” He fists his other hand in the end of his scarf, holds it close to his chest and listens to Frumpkin rumble in his ear. “And if you want me to stop, if you do not want to hear any of it... just… let me know.” 

“Of--of course, of course, Caleb.” She nods, ears pressed back, eyes wide and searching. “I'm here. Whenever you want to start.” 

He licks his lips, ducks his head, thinks of the right way to start this and settles on a question. "Do you remember when he came to the cells? After Yasha left the day previous?”

“Vaguely…" Nott admits. "I remember Jester shaking me awake, telling me he had taken you up. That she wasn't sure if you would come back down. And I--" She stops, huffing out a strangled breath. “I remember being scared.

And he-- he came back a long while later, with food. He looked smug… he--” She shakes her head. “I didn't know what it meant before… but gods--” Nott swallows heavily. 

“Jester-- she… she helped prop me up so I could eat, and he just watched from outside the cell. smiled at us--” She looks up to him, eyes pinched. “He brought you back down later. You had that… you had that new shirt on, new clothes and I didn't-- I never fathomed-- I thought… I don't know what I thought, maybe I had an idea in my head, but I didn't want to think--” She shakes her head again, curling in on herself. 

“You looked lost. You looked scared. Far away… when you go into your own head, your eyes-- they look _empty_ …And I-- I should have--” She trembles, ears pressed flat to her skull and voice wavering. “But I didn't see any injuries, I couldn't see anything that I could try and figure out what happened...” 

She looks up again, and while she isn't crying he can see she's on the cusp, and he reaches for her. But she recoils, flinching back, curling into herself as she shakes her head. “You were in new clothes-- _you were in new clothes_ \-- and you looked so small and-- and alone, and I should have--- I _should_ have-- I didn't connect the dots until later… until it was too late… And I can never apologize enough for leaving you to deal with that on your own. Afterwards… and everything in Zadash,” she whispers, hand tightening around his in turn. “I'm-- I'm so sorry...” 

Caleb shakes his head.  he doesn't want her apologies, not when he hoped they would never see this on him. Not when even that stings bitterly against him. “Do not apologize. I did not let you… I did not want you to… you can't blame yourself for that, Nott...” 

She nods, sighing, before shaking her head, eyes screwed shut. “....did you still want to tell me?” 

Caleb nods, keeps his grip on Nott like a lifeline and closes his eyes. Frumpkin purrs softly on his shoulders, keeping him grounded here as he finally reaches back and pulls up the image he's been avoiding.

It opens in his head with the reek of a cell he's tried to forget. With dim, brimstone lighting, with the barely visible features of his cellmates and the weight of a collar around his throat that's nearly as heavy as the hunger in his gut. He remembers Nott, tucked up against his thigh, her breath shallow and pulse thready where he rested his listless fingers on her neck. 

Remembers the sound of the key in the lock, the squeal of the hinges, the sound of his boots on the stone, the heavy, warning breaths of a predator approaching and blotting out what little bit of light he could see as Lorenzo crouched down in front of him. Tilted his chin up and only dropped his hand when he saw that Caleb wasn't completely wasted away yet. He remembers the smile--

“He came into the cell. Asked if I was willing to talk with him. Hoisted me up...when I agreed…”

It's all the sensation of fingers digging into the back of his neck, lifting him like a rag doll, all too limp and pliable, as he was led out of the cell. The last glimpse of Yasha's face as he followed on Lorenzo’s heels still haunts him, still makes it hard to look her in the eyes sometimes. 

“He took me out of there and there were two chairs, at the back, near the furnaces. Some...Sometimes, I can still hear the sound of them in my ears. See them… and him when he smiled... and ah, he…. “ 

With each blink he can still see the way the furnaces had illuminated the scene, Lorenzo leering at him, lips split into a wicked grin, and still the only way he can think of it is a devil on his throne. 

“He gave me a choi--” Nott frowns and he cuts himself off, pulling out of her grip and idly scratching at his wrist. “An ultimatum.” Nott nods and he continues.

“He said if I-- if I spent… _time_ with him… that he would bring you all food.” Caleb wrings his hands. “And I-- you were… I couldn't-- I said yes… I… I agreed to it. To sle-- to sleep with him.” Caleb nearly chokes on the word, heart leaping into his throat and sinking all at once.  “I did not… I never wanted to… I--” 

“I know, Caleb, I already know. And I believe you.” She grabs his hands where they've started to scratch even harder at his bandages. “Take your time.” 

He nods, swallowing heavily, frantically looking over the goblin's hands for a distraction from the image in his head. 

“He uhm-- He--” he falters. “He made me walk up the stairs ahead of him… He-- it felt-- I did not-- It felt like I couldn't get away, and I knew I couldn't even as I led the way up.” He remembers the door opening-- seeing the room and the splash of red that made up the mattress. “And uhm, he… in his room… there were these sheets. They looked like… like blood. And I… he--” 

He should stop. He should stop-- He should--

“He tore my shirt, pu-- ah, pushed me back until I--” He kneads at his jaw with the heel of one palm. “Until I fell on them. And they stung, they hurt, where they slid under my--" he swallows heavily, clutching at his own shoulder and squeezing, fingers digging in until it's all he can feel-- and he tries to focus on the current pain of it. "Under my shoulders and back and-- and then-- then he…” 

_\-- the slaver looming over him, trapping him, arms barred to either side of him, his own useless where they've fallen onto the sheets like clipped wings. Fingernails dragging over him, caught in his skin, teeth in his shoulder, hands on his sides, on his hips, tangling in his hair--_

“I didn't-- he…” Caleb swipes at his mouth, other hand releasing his shoulder and moving back to clutching onto Nott's like a lifeline. 

“You only have to tell me as much as you're willing to, Caleb,” she breathes, “I'm here though, I'm not leaving... I'll stay as long as you want me to.” 

He nods as he hunches into himself, eyes screwed shut against the memory of being pushed back down onto the sheets, shoulders chafing against too smooth satin, hands curling under his knees, under his thighs, maneuvering him; memorizing the grain of the ceiling and hoping it's all a nightmare he's forgotten how to wake up from--  

And pain. 

He's dealt with pain before. All kinds. Knives, ropes, fists, hooks, things shoved under his skin and left there. Dog's teeth, a switch in his back, the beat of a whip, fire warping his flesh, drowning, broken bones, teeth pulled, the bottom of his feet cut to ribbons, evisceration, a hand in his entrails before he was sealed shut with magic-- 

He knows pain. He knows it like a friend. Intimate and grounding. But he still can't-- that pain. Like dipping his spine in acid-- in poison-- the sudden, endless, flesh deep agony of it turned to a soul deep corrosion the longer he stayed under. Each grunt another pocket carved out of him, each drop of sweat against his skin another pit he couldn't seal up, and the final, satisfied breath huffed in his ear a tarnish he could never-- can never-- polish off.

“...af--” he stutters, “After the… the fir--” He swallows heavily and shakes his head, fingers flexing. “The first time… there was… it was maybe an hour… maybe more.” 

He's not even sure, it's hard to recall much of it at times, like a curtain muffling the conscious passage of time he usually relishes.

“I-- It is-- It is hard to remember exactly... And I-- I wanted to leave. I wanted to leave... I--” He scrubs at his eyes, surprised they're bone dry now-- now, when it feels like his chest is being ripped apart all over again. “Everything hur-- it hurt...” he admits quietly, voice hushed and tremulous, barely a breath, “I could not-- There was so much...” _blood._

The smell, the stench, the reek of iron in his nostrils. Pain, pain, pain; bone-deep, flesh-deep, soul-deep, buried inside of him-- stuck inside of him. Even when it was done. The sated  breaths of a predator laid to rest beside him, the stick of fine sheets to his skin like razors. A thousand needles running over every inch of sweat-slicked flesh, eyes stuck to the wall beyond the rolling expanse of red and only thinking _‘please’_ to gods that would never answer. Numbness. Acceptance. Compliancy. Limp-limbed, ragdolled, frozen. _Fawn_. 

He; a fawn tucked against the wolf's side. Reduced to a doe-dappled pelt where he used to be something more. Dangerous, controlled, coward-- survivable. His own wolf's skin-- no, a _scavenger’s_ \--his _farce_ \-- pulled away by the other. 

“Take your time.” 

Caleb nods, swallowing against the stone lodged in his throat, the stone sitting on his chest and pushing down. 

“He… pulled me back… saw the--” He reaches up to curl a hand around the amulet, his other hand curling tighter around Nott’s hand. “The amulet and he… we made another deal.”

_\--rough hands pulling him up onto his knees, fingers hinging his jaw wide-- pulled back down by a hand on the back of his skull-- empty, empty, vacant-- too much, too present, too full--gagging--_

“And-- I-- the--” 

_\--chest pressed down into the sheets-- the sounds, the smells, the choking-- turning his head to breathe and wishing he didn't have survival instincts ingrained into him so he could just drown in the sheets. The huffing laugh breathed into his shoulder looping in his head with the fingers dug into the meat of his hips--his sides-- pressing down against the small of his back and sliding up to hold him down by the back of his neck, to span his skull, and smother him into the satin-- his useless cries muffled. His mouth filled with the must of used sheets-- _of being used_ \-- and the harsh tang of copper thick in the back of his throat as he was crushed by the feeling of hips against him again-- and again--and again-- _

“I remember hoping that I would die,” he laughs, a hysterical, wet burble from his chest, “I remember hoping that he would kill me…” 

Nott sucks in a sharp breath, fingers tightening their grip around his. He knows it's selfish...cowardly, of him. 

“And… I… I suppose… the third--” Numerics, numerals, boiling it down to the number of stab wounds. A crime scene. He; the victim still sprawled out for the callous to inspect and piece back together. And he wants to stop here, but he can't, he hasn't even said a fraction of it outloud anyways, but it still feels like he's said too much. “The third time.” 

And Notts eyes are wide, brimming with tears that track down her cheeks, and he's barely even said the half of it out loud. It doesn't feel like pity though. Yet, he can imagine questions, things the more callous might spit. Things that he's asked himself.

 

How many knives did he slip between your ribs?  
Did it hurt?  
If it did, why didn't you stop him?  
Was it better the second time?  
Were you used to it by then?  
Was it easier, Caleb?  
What about the third?  
If you didn't want it, why didn't you refuse?  
Why didn't you just say no?  
Why didn't you fight back?  
Why weren't you stronger?

 

“In the tent…” he breathes, “that's where he… the food..” 

“The human child?” 

“It looked just like jerky… like any other piece of meat.” He pauses, hand curling over his sternum at the memory of the taste on his tongue “He made me eat it-- before he…” Caleb swallows, breath shaky.  “And I… I shouldn't have--” He looks down at her hand, at the missing finger. 

She holds it up, eyes pinched. “You said this was your fault… why?” 

“During-- when-- while he… I… he told me not to… not to struggle but I couldn't-- I--” He runs his nails over his the side of his neck, avoiding her eyes. “And I should not have. The next day he ordered them to--” He digs flat, bitten and ragged nails into the side of his neck and he focuses on the drag of them, Frumpkin letting out a small distressed meow beside his ear. “He told them to do it and I-- I’m-- I am sorry, Nott.” 

“Caleb...” She grabs his hand, stops him from scratching.  “ _It was not your fault._ ” She holds both of his hands in front of her, looks him in the eye and doesn't falter. “The actions of bad people are not your own. You were just trying to survive, we were all doing that. I'm not angry at you-- I could never blame you for this… I blame them-- it was them-- not you.” 

He nods. There's some part of him that's come to terms with that, but there's a part that clings to that blame, craves the bite of it like bittersweet poison, because it makes so much more sense than all of this. 

“Is that all you wanted to tell me?” 

He shakes his head. “There are more.” 

“More what?” 

“Hands…” 

“The people you… during the--” She gestures to her temple. “--fiasco in Zadash?” 

“Some of them.” Not all of them ended like that… and there's still encounters he can't fully remember. 

“Why did--” 

He stops hearing her after the word, going rigid, muscles locking up and heart stampeding under his ribs. The question echoing in his head. 

__  
If it was so bad, why did you sleep with people afterwards?  
Why not run from it?  
Why seek it all out again?  
Why endanger yourself?  
Why let them do whatever they wanted?  
Why, Caleb?  
_**Why?’** _

“I don't know--” He barks, hands clapped over his ears. “I do not know… okay. Is that-- is that what you want to hear?” Voice waspish and quick, usual enunciation lost to venom and a curdled heat. “I don't know, I won't ever know, I-- I can not ever know, it does not make sense, none of it ever makes sense-- I just-- It all makes sense in the moment, at the time, and then-- and then it doesn't and I… I do not-- sometimes I do not know how to stop it.” 

“Stop what?” 

“Listening.” 

She eyes him, brows furrowed. “Listening?” 

“To the-- the thing-- the--” He mirrors her earlier gesture. “Up here.” 

“Up there?” She sounds concerned now, drawing back a bit. “Like a voice?”

“No,” he quickly affirms, “maybe...I mean, no, not exactly.” He shakes his head. “It's not-- it's not like that. It is just--” He's not sure how to explain the calculations and the logic of it. It barely makes any sense in the aftermath, but at the time it had seemed as pragmatic and true as anything. “It, ah… it makes it easier, but it also… I never factor for myself.” 

She nods. “I was going to ask why you never came to any of us… when you started thinking like that… when things got that bad…" she trails off, worrying at her lip. “If you were scared of us, if it was something we did or said. If we-- if we pushed you away somehow...” 

“No, nein, no, gods--” he taps his fingers against his thighs, wishing there was a better way to explain all of it.  “Of course not…” He ducks his head, shoulders hunching. “I-- after I-- with Molly… it was not safe to stay around.” 

“Oh, Caleb, no…”

“I am not a good person, Nott," he says and he can practically feel Yasha's disappointment even though the barbarian isn't here. 

“Are any of us?” Nott asks. “None of us constitute as good people. I mean we-- we've done good things though, Caleb.” She shrugs. “And sometimes… sometimes we don't. But-- we apologize for those bad things when we know they've really hurt someone we care about. We try and do our best not to repeat what we've done.” She grabs his hands where he's started to drag his nails over the fabric of his slacks.  “That's what makes you a better person.” She squeezes his hands and he returns the favor. “It's what means you're _learning_ to be a better person, Caleb.” 

“I don't know if I can do it sometimes," he admits quietly, “be better...” 

“You are… you will be… we _all_ will. Things won't always be like this...” She smiles at him, all snaggled teeth and watery. “We'll find a better tomorrow... together.” 

“Together...” he agrees after a moment, trying to mirror her own put-on grin and he watches her smile wider, her eyes still brimming with unshed tears. 

"Nott…" He says after a moment, ducking his head.

"Yeah?" 

He looks up at her, eyes pinched, hands curled close to his chest, as if it will keep everything inside that he's already let out. 

"I do not want to sleep..." he admits, "not tonight…" 

"Okay… that's okay," She scrubs at her face, sighing. "I'll stay up with you then." 

"...danke..." he whispers, listening for the sounds of the breaths he swears he can feel on his neck. 

"Should we... move closer to camp?" She asks.

He nods.

But neither of them move. They just sit in the dark and Caleb can feel it starting to press in closer, like wolves circling, like the continuous, phantom huff of hot air on the back of his neck, and teeth, bared and eager to--

The rattle of Nott's flask breaks the swarming quiet and he watches her drink, itches at his wrist, and thinks about how empty it can be. How numb it can all get if he finds the right thing. 

"Does it help?" 

"Hm? Oh…" She pulls the flask away, inspecting it. "I suppose, a bit. It's kind of just a… a habit now." Nott purses her lips, head cocking.  "It's nothing like the other itch… but it helps me think less and do more shit." She turns to him with a hollow, crooked smile. "They call it liquid courage for a reason." 

"...I think you could still be brave without it." 

Her ears press back, grin wavering. "That's… that's a nice thought." 

She takes another swig and he purses his lips. 

"Have you ever tried to stop?" 

"Naw…" She sniffs, swiping at her nose. "Guess I never really thought about it." 

"Do you want to?" 

She shrugs before leveling him with a pointed look. "Did _you_ want to stop?" 

" _Was_?" 

"Whatever that-- whatever you were taking in Zadash." 

He turns to fiddling with his bandages. "I did not really… have a choice." 

She sighs. "Would you ever do it again?" 

He doesn't offer an answer. 

"How about we make a deal then?" Nott starts, "I try to wean myself off this a bit. Not cold turkey, but I'll try and drink less... And _you_ \-- you have to promise, if you ever feel like you want to seek that out again, you'll tell one of us first." 

His brows furrow, fingers curling into loose fists in his lap. "And will you stop me?" 

Nott sighs, thumbs brushing over the flask, claws worrying at the grooves. "Some of us might try…" she admits. "But if you do find a way to get ahold of something again, we'll at least know about it this time..." 

"That is… that's fair," he manages, itching at his forearms. "And I… I do  not plan on doing, ah… _that_ again." 

Nott is quiet, tilting the flask so it catches the minimal amounts of light, and he watches the platinum shimmer. "Itches never really leave though, do they?" 

"Nein…" he sighs, stopping the scratching, turning his palms face up in his lap. "They do not…"

She takes another long drink before screwing the flask shut and handing it over. "I'll let you hold onto it for now." 

He accepts it with shaky fingers, hands curling around the cool metal, thumbs running over the enchantments etched into the surface. 

"I'll be taking it back tomorrow though, but you can hold onto it after each sunset…if you want." Nott continues, tugging at her ear. 

"Are you sure?" 

"Fuck _no._ Of course not." She looks up at him. "But I trust you." 

He's not sure if she means not to drink his own share of the alcohol or to give it back each morning. Either way, he holds his arm out as an offering, lets her slump into his side, draws her in, tucked close and safe against him, where he can feel her heartbeat, make sure her breathing sounds nothing like it did in that cell. 

"Danke…" he breathes, when he thinks she's fallen asleep or gotten halfway there.

"...for...wha?" She slurs against his side. 

"Everything..." 

"mbpf...." she mumbles something nearly incoherently into his coat and he smiles, small, barely there, but it's something.. 

And it's quiet, out here, on the edge of everything.

He looks down at the flask, turns it over in his palm, and lets Nott burrow further into his side. Running his thumb over the cap, he turns it a quarter, than once around, and another, until the little stopper pops free. 

It's a long moment of staring at the shine of metal, of contemplating putting it up to his lips, of drinking away the nightmares he's ripped free from their hiding places.

' _I trust you.'_

He sighs, rescrewing the cap back on, pocketing the flask, and bundling the now snoring goblin into his arms. He carries her back to camp, settles her on the already laid out bedroll amongst the others. Sets up the wire, goes through the routine of making the Tiny Hut as well,  until he's sure they're secure as they can be. 

Nott rouses when he sets Frumpkin down beside her, the cat curling up at her back. 

“I'll stay on watch." He brushes his fingers through her hair. "Get some rest.” 

“You'll be okay?” she slurs, still half-asleep and slightly inebriated. 

“Ja.” He nods. “Ja I… I think so…” 

"You'll be okay with…?” she asks quietly, eyes darting to the tiefling who's also still up, sat at the edge of the bubble and staring out into the dark. 

Molly having apparently volunteered for the first watch that Caleb assumes Nott was supposed to stay up for as well. 

“Ja...” 

He doesn't really want to be alone, and he can tell Nott has a lot to process. She's tired. And he's tired. But he's afraid of what's lurking. He wants a distraction, and one that isn't bottled or prone to making him less observant. And Nott trusts him not to indulge himself with the flask.

Molly is talkative enough, loud enough, he can fill the spaces of silence without the potential dangers the flask tucked away into his coat holds. 

He wanders over, after making sure Nott is squared away, bereft of a cat, and feeling like the term 'exposed nerve' in all it's poignancy. 

“Mister Caleb.” Molly says without looking over at him. 

“Mister Mollymauk…" He replies, letting routine guide him here. Brain still flickering between autopilot and the well of something like panic bubbling just beneath the surface.

“Quiet night so far.” Molly says, pulling his tarot deck free and already beginning to shuffle through them. An odd habit the tiefling has continuously exhibited, as if he always has to keep his fingers busy. 

“That is... good." 

And he listens to the _fwip_ and crisp shift of cards. Tries to ignore the fact that Nott knows more now, that maybe he shouldn't have said anything, that even if he couldn't share a lot of it, it's rattling around, all loose and right there in his head, rather than lodged in the careful grooves he made for them to stay in and fester. 

The common idea, the notion, that talking about something makes it easier-- like the death of a loved one-- all of that advice fails to mention the immediate aftermath. The part where there's nothing except you and the reality you've revealed to yourself. Like tearing away a smoke screen you set up, with the explicit inclination to never brush it away. And now all that your left with is to confront it. _Alone._

He looks over at Molly, the flash of rings and the carmine stain on the tielfing's claws serving as some form of distraction, but also a reminder that only brings up more. 

And he already apologized, but it doesn't feel like enough. Maybe it will never be enough. Not when he almost...not when he knows what it feels like to have that choice taken out of his hands.

He curls his fingers in his scarf, hooks them through the loose weave of it and pulls at the colorful gift they gave him-- and searches for the right way to say this.

“I am sorry.” He manages; tongue leaden, heavy with all of the conversations he's already forced it through today.  

Molly seems to startle, frowning, and tilting his head to look over at him. “About what?” 

“A lot of things…" He says, quietly. "But mostly using, ah… using magic on you to...” 

The tiefling shrugs, turning back to look at the deck in his hands. “Like I said before, it's in the past.”

“But--” 

Molly sighs. “We all do shitty things and I won't lie, it was a really, _really_ shitty thing to do, but the fact that you regret it and are trying to atone for it is honestly better than most.”

“Ja…but--”

“ _Look_ ,” Molly stays his hands, tail lashing behind him to curl close to his leg. “I believe in second chances. Even thirds-- and just giving people a chance to better themselves in general. Because if I didn't-- if I just condemned them for an act they made in their past and obviously really regret, then how can I also forgive myself?” 

The tiefling looks over at him, the usual smirk on his face laced with solemnity. “People are always learning, they're always changing...” Molly places a hand on his shoulder and Caleb doesn't shrug it off. “Just make sure that change is for the better.” 

The hand turns up to lightly pat the side of his face-- in all the good natured, close-quartered ways that Molly interacts with the world around him-- and then, the tiefling settles back, to shuffle the tarot deck once more. And he's left with the impression of fingers on his cheek, the rasp of skin against his, the casual presence of another, living, breathing person next to him. Of another person who knows something he never should have told any of them, that he's a murderer, that he's _worse_ \--

“After I-- Once you knew all of it…You asked me…" he starts, "you asked ‘how do I know how much of it is really me?” He narrows his eyes. “Why?” 

“I-”

Molly hesitates and it's all too uncharacteristic to how he was before. When Caleb would ask him, ask any of them about themselves. Still too curious for his own good to think twice, or that asking more questions would invite them back.    
__

_‘Are you a good guy?’ He asks._

_Molly just smiles. ‘I'd like to think so.’  
_

“Because sometimes I'm not sure.” 

Caleb frowns. “About?” 

“Me.”

Caleb’s brow furrows. 

“I don't like to think about my past, I don't want to chase it-- I don't care to even talk about any of this right now...” Molly shuffles the deck faster, cutting the deck and jogging it against his palm. “But that's not really fair when we keep asking you to tell us about your own shit.” 

“You do not have to--”

“No, it's… it's fine… this is _fine_.” Molly grits out. “Yasha knows some of it already… Figure I might as well tell someone else.” He sighs, fiddling with the bent corner of one of the cards. "And like I already said… Sometimes, I'm not sure how much of me is me." 

"How do you mean?" 

"You know when..." Molly trails off, glancing off to the side. "When you have a thought, or an impulse to do something, you're pretty sure it's you right?"

"Ja…" _No._

"And you're _positive_ it has to be you, 'cause who else could it be?" 

Caleb nods; a slow, hesitant one that threatens to turn sour.

"Well…" Molly continues, tail curled over his ankles. "Let's say, sometimes, I'll be reading something, and while I'm not the--" The tiefling laughs; a self deprecating huff accompanied by a smile. "--best reader out there, there'll be a word, sometimes in a language I've never seen before, and I'll know it. As if I've _always_ know it. And this--" He holds up his arms and gestures to his neck. "--drawing a blade across my skin, using my blood, that was like second nature. An after-thought I assumed was just an accident at first, but maybe it was just instinct? Muscle memory, I suppose?" 

Caleb says nothing and Molly sighs, chin dipping towards his chest. "And I have these dreams…" 

"Dreams?" 

"Yeah, they... sometimes they keep me up. I think…" Molly squints. "I think they're memories." He shakes his head, shuffling the deck again, shifting it in his palm. "They're not mine though, none of it's me. I _know_ it isn't me, but sometimes the line blurs…and I don't know how much of that other person is still here and how much is just... me.' 

Caleb says nothing, unsure what he even _should_ say to that, half-distracted by his own racing thoughts and the information handed to him. 

"Shit, look--" Molly waves his hand dismissively. "I know it's a bloody lot to take in-- Don't worry about it. It won't affect the group or anyth--" 

"Have you been dealing with this the whole time?" 

Molly shrugs. "Among other things..." 

Caleb worries at the center of his palm with his thumb, feels the tendons shift, palpitates it and massages at his hand until it's all he can focus on. He's not sure what would be better. Never knowing all the things you've done, or remembering almost every moment like it happened yesterday. 

Molly seems content to let the conversation falter and drop off, laying down cards in a spread in front of him. And Caleb looks up at the stars beyond the barrier, trying to think of anything else besides how it feels like someone's standing behind him,  like there's fingers digging into his neck, into his side, grabbing and pulling-- that the flash of gold-capped teeth sits behind each blink, a stain of red framing it. 

He mutters the names of the constellations he knows as he finds them. Remembers his mother saying that one of the best ways to ground yourself was numbers, counting, routine and repetition. That familiarity always soothed troublesome thoughts. 

He manages to get through one cursory count of them before it starts to swirl. He can feel himself losing to that expanse above his head and the unknowns below-- endless darkness in both. 

“If you could go anywhere… where would you go?” Molly asks and he startles, snapping back to himself and swallowing thickly against the crawl of bile spidering its way up his throat.

“I…" He rasps, voice thick. "I'm not sure.” 

“Well, I think I'd like to visit where everyone is from eventually," Molly continues, “see what it's like and all that.” 

The only one of them without a home and a land to say he's from, or that he can make claim to, wanting to see their own-- is admittedly odd. He wonders if Molly wants to see the places themselves, or all of their reactions to that indescribable nostalgia of stepping into the place that became as important to you as the people in it. 

“Ah, the-- the Zemni fields…in Blumenthal... the meadows. They are lovely. In spring… when the flowers bloom, the fields look like paintings.” 

“Do they?” 

“Ja…" He continues, words coming easier with more pleasant memories to focus on.  "And my mother, she had her own small garden… I used to help her with it. When I was too little to really be of much help.” He chuckles, dryly, breathy. “I used to tear her hard work up by the roots, because I thought they were… well, I suppose I thought they were pretty, and that she would like them." He huffs out another small laugh at the thought. “She never scolded me for it.” 

“She sounds like she was a remarkable woman.”

He sombers, wringing his hands. “She was...” 

She was and he-- She didn't deserve-- Not a son like hi--

“Desmond helped me sew this coat, you know.” Molly interjects after a pause.  

He looks over at the tiefling, but Molly doesn't turn to face him, still flipping a card between his fingers. 

"Sorry, I just…" Molly sighs. “I suppose Gustav and Des are the closest things I have to parents...” 

“Do you ever… do you want to go back to them?”

“Someday… maybe. ‘m not sure.”  

Caleb swallows heavily. “Do you miss them?” 

“Sure. I mean, of course I do. But if I left--” Molly looks over at him. “I think I might miss you idiots more.” 

He furrows his brows at that. If Molly misses the carnival, he could have just gone with Gustav, left them and wandered off to be with whatever he considers family to him. 

Molly sighs. “Who knew this all would start out with a simple trip to the carnival, huh?” 

It's another distraction from everything else, and he's starting to see a pattern here; the tiefling piping up when he's gone quiet for too long. 

He takes the bait eagerly. 

“I… I do not know where me and Nott would be if we had not gone with you all that day.” Caleb shakes his head. “Nowhere good probably.”

“Well it's a good thing we happened to roll into town that day then.” 

Caleb wrinkles his nose. “A mere coincidence.” 

“Sure.” Molly flips the card around, the Death card glaring at Caleb from where the tiefling's perched it between his fingers. “Coincidence.” 

Caleb purses his lips. The implications of the meeting being fated, written in stone-- like _destiny_ , sends him hunching, shoulders hiking up. The idea that something, someone, some greater thing than himself, than even the people around him-- help determine where he ends up. It is impractical, it is like shoving the blame of what he's done off onto a god, when it was him who pressed his hand into the hay on the horse cart and ignited it. That it wasn't him who said-- who agreed to-- who ended up in that-- 

He shakes his head. It also would mean all of that was meant to be, and while the punishments from that hell were due onto him, they weren't due onto the others. None of that was fated for them because-- 

“You know…" Molly starts again and Caleb blinks, torn away from his spiraling thoughts once more. "When we raided the nest. When we found the others and they said he had taken you and Yasha separately… I was scared.” 

Caleb looks over at him, the tielfing's head ducked, frown on his lips where usually a sure-grin curls them.. 

“And not a lot of things scare me.” Molly smiles, turning to him, but it doesn't reach his eyes. “I guess only two years of conscious life will do that to a person. I'm a bit… ah, reckless?” He taps his sternum, with a grimace. “But I was scared then-- when they told me that. There was a part of me that was afraid we wouldn't be able to get either of you back.” 

Caleb watches Molly clutch at his own wrist, thumb rubbing along the scars there, and his own itch under the bandages. 

“And after that fight, after we found you, it felt like I didn't get either of you back-- but you were both right _there_. You were right there, and somehow, still, it was hard to recognize either of you. All of you..” Molly scrunches his brow. “Yasha used to let me braid her hair all the time, you know-- whenever I wanted to. But the first time I reached for her without thinking, after all of that-- she nearly broke my wrist."

"And she apologized, of course… but it scared me.” Molly chuckles, shaking his head, rubbing at his eye with the heel of his palm. “Stupid, right? What was there to be scared of? Yasha would never hurt me… she wouldn't do that.”

“I am sure… she did not mean it.” He tries, unsure how to comfort here. 

“I know-- _I know_ \-- I'm not saying--” Molly sighs, “I wasn't afraid of _her_ , I don't think... I think I was afraid of what it meant. And, I mean, you-- I had to pull _you_ off of Lorenzo's burning corpse. You were… you just kept hitting him, until there was _nothing_ left-- and I should've known- I should've _known_ there was something wrong. But I didn't see it. I didn't see it until Yasha… until she told me what happened to her and…” Molly chuckles, an exasperated little thing that sounds more like a sigh. “And I don't think you want apologies do you?” 

“No.” He says, hard, lips pressed into a thin line, shoulders hiked up like risen hackles. 

“I figured.” Molly nods. “Well... what I will say is…” He turns to him, with a small smile, a genuine and quiet one. “I'm glad you're still here, Caleb.”

_‘You're still here.’_

“And if there's ever anything you need, let me know. I may not be as good at the uh, whole--” Molly mimes writing in the air, “--as Jester, but I'd like to think I'm a good listener.” 

And the question is not _'how can I fix it'_ \-- fix you-- as if he's broken and discardable, or even _'why are you sad, frustrated, anxious'_ \-- everything he can't explain in so many words to any of them. But it's _'how can I help? Where is it darkest? Do you need me to help you light the way?'_

It's a rope thrown across a raging river, to help tow him across, and away from the wolves chasing him on his side of the banks.  

And he can, at the least, return the favor. 

"I can be a good listener too," he mutters, "if you ever need to… figure something out… or just talk." 

And it's the same offer he's made to Jester, to Nott, in a way to Beau, even in a silent sort of manner to Yasha-- and he would for Fjord, but the half-orc seems the most reluctant to talk of them all. And then there's  Caduceus, who's hard to read on his best days...

"Thanks." Molly smirks. "Yasha is pretty good at being a bit of an anchor already, but I appreciate the offer." 

With how close those two have been since the start of this, he's not overly surprised. So, he lets the quiet retake the space again rather than fumble his way through some kind of response. He fidgets with the end of his scarf, scanning the terrain beyond the dome every so often, thankfully finding nothing beyond it.  

“Hey, you know…we're almost to the coast, aren't we?” Molly asks. “What's the first thing you'll do when we finally reach the shore?” 

It's another ploy at distracting him, but he doesn't fight the routine. “I‘m not sure yet...” 

“Have you ever seen the ocean?” 

“Nein...” 

“Me either.” 

“I know it is very... large.” He says, squinting as he tries to recall what he's read about the ocean they're heading for. 

Molly laughs. “ _No way,_ I couldn't have guessed.”

He purses his lips. “It is also _very_ blue.” 

Molly mock gasps and Caleb looks over to see him grinning up at the stars. “Wow, _really_? Could'a sworn Gustav told me the ocean was purple. You _must_ be lying.” 

It's all thick with sarcasm and sharp humor, and a tang of familiarity.

Caleb shrugs, swiping the small half-smile off his face. “The books could always be wrong...” 

“We'll see, won't we?” 

“Ja,” he says, “we will…” 

He didn't think he would ever leave the Empire, let alone visit the ocean. He wonders if his mother or father would have liked the ocean. If it'll be like any of the storybooks described it to be, and not just the dry descriptions out of textbooks. 

And their time on watch passes like that, the remaining hour turning to nothing as Molly brings up more benign threads of conversation. Molly carries the weight of them when Caleb gets tired of talking and just wants to listen to anything beside his own thoughts. 

It's when he starts to contemplate Nott's flask again; thinks about pulling it from his coat, about finally just having a little bit of it. Just _enough_ to take away the creeping, knife's edge resting on his neck, and ease away the jittery feeling in his fingers-- when there's footsteps. 

"Been quiet so far?" Beau asks, dropping down beside him. 

He looks over at her, nodding slowly. 

She claps him on the back and he goes rigid, but she's quick to remove her hand. "Good-- and you look like shit, man. Get some fucking sleep." 

Fjord sits down in the margin of space between him and Molly with a groan, popping a crick in his neck. "No offense... but, yeah, you, uh-- you don't look too hot." Fjord adds, looking him over. "Try and at least get a couple hours in if you can."

"Just 'cause you say _'no offense'_ , doesn't make it any fucking less offensive." Beau grumbles.   

Molly leans around Fjord, ignoring the monk. "Cad has some chamomile tea if you need it--" 

Caleb shakes his head at Molly, getting to his feet and shuffling back. "No, no-- that's-- I'll manage on my own." 

Beau shrugs, turning back to Fjord; seeming to either accept his refusal or dismiss him. "You got cards on you?" 

"No, but--" 

Caleb tunes them all out, bee-lining for his cat and his bed. And he's grateful they don't try and stop him, make him accept their offered help. They let him retreat, with his tail between his legs and spine hunched, skulking back to Frumpkin who peers up at him with too bright eyes. 

He bundles the cat into his arms, holding him close, listening to the quiet rumbles of the feline as he settles down beside a slumbering Nott. 

The hut is cramped as always, the other's laid out in a spill of limbs around him, only a small pocket left for him at the center. He lays down on his side within it, Frumpkin still clutched tight to his chest, the cat burrowing his head into the crook of his arm, paws kneading at him. 

He can hear Beau and the other two still talking, in hushed tones that sound like nonsense to his ears. And he watches Nott's sleeping form in front of him, her side rising and falling with each breath. It's rhythmic, repetitive, and he counts them when his heart starts to race again, the back of his neck prickling.  

Frumpkin worms his way out of his grip, deigning to sprawl himself over his neck like the fey usually does, tucking his head under Caleb's chin. 

It helps a bit. 

He still doesn't plan on sleeping, not even as he counts each metronomic breath from Nott, not even as Frumpkin purrs atop his protective, scarfing drape along his throat, not even as exhaustion tugs at his eyes and threatens to drag them down. Instead, he steels his jaw, digs his fingers into the dirt and curls the other close to his sternum, finding the amulet and holding tight. 

It is nearly two in the morning. Sunrise is still hours away. Still far too much time to think, too much time to himself, but sleep will be no better. He knows what waits for him down there, where he can't shove everything away and ignore it. And even now, with the inside of his head all ripped up and bloodied, exposed and hard to ignore, there's no reprieve. 

He'll be glad for inns again. When he can shove his back against some immovable wall, when there's only one entrance, when they aren't sleeping in the middle of a field where anything-- _anyone,_ could walk up to them. It isn't safe out here, it's exposed and--

Nott turns over in her sleep, shifting until she's facing him; eyes still closed, hair fallen over her face, drool at the corner of her mouth. 

There's the vivid juxtaposition, of the first day in that cell; with their hands locked behind their backs and trussed to their ankles, laying, motionless on their sides in the grime and grit. Still gagged and bound, but they were both awake then, when he couldn't say anything to her, but he wanted to. When he couldn't comfort _any_ of them, but he wanted to. This image is not so harrowing; less distantly sinister fire-light and more quiet darkness. And he--

Nott's brows twitch, furrowing downwards, her hand flexing and reaching out for something, a low, distressed whine leaving her. And Caleb knows it's some kind of nightmare; her ears turned down, flat to her skull, and eyes roving behind their lids. 

He grabs her hand where it's struggling, and she holds tight,  so tightly he thinks she must be awake, but she isn't. Her breath quickly evens out again, and the nearly choked sounds she was starting to make die off, back into the occasional snuffle and huffed exhale.

He doesn't let go of her hand though, and he won't, not if it means her nightmares will come back for her. 

He goes back to counting the number of breaths, and then, when that no longer works, the number of heartbeats he can feel under his palm. 

And he waits for the sun to rise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ,,We're finally almost at the ocean,,, and Nicodranis. 
> 
> And if you're still here, I mean, kudos to you at this point, really.  
> You've gotten to read through me endlessly rambling on and probably repeating myself for far too long.
> 
> \--The scary part of reading this all over,, is realizing the level of communication between the M9 in this fic is still probably, ~~maybe~~ ,, better than the communication in canon. and that's just,,, fucking _woof_.

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr- trashofboat
> 
> Discord- Ara#6309
> 
> Feel free to contact me about anything on either.
> 
> Note: Discord is weird and forces me to accept your message request/friend me first so be aware of that.


End file.
